Ran across an interesting cross-promotion that’s running in Sacramento this summer. It’s perfect for leading the community into
shopping local.
See what you could do along these lines:
You’ll need to do a little fiddling… the promotion is not explained really well there. Here, you can “eavesdrop” on their idea as it develops. More discussion amongst their members on this Facebook group.
‘Course, you’d need to come up with a really good title for this promotion, which the Geeks (being geeks and all) haven’t done. What might your area call this?
Playing with a Full Deck of Cards, maybe?
And best wishes to TnT Thrift, whose thrift shop site I found this on!
Auntie Kate The Resale Expert 
I haven’t read those 54 pickup but maybe I should have read it to get along with you guys.
Basically, each of the 54 participants is a local “geeky” business, organization or artist in Sacramento. They all paid a fee, enough to cover printing costs, to have their logo/artwork/contact info put on a single playing card, business card. But as we printed 1100 decks, they have 1100 of their cards (an Ace of Clubs for example) floating around. Businesses just give out their card and people around town collect them and put together their deck that way.
Feel free to contact me at frellingbored@yahoo.com if anyone has any further questions on the how-to, etc., to do it for their city.
Stephanie, thanks for the short version! I can see my audience, consignment/ resale/ thrift shops, doing this as well and we appreciate the opportunity to peek behind the scenes as your group planned it. I’m thinking that even a smaller local group of resalers, say in a market area, could do this, like:
With 13 participants, and the 4 suits of cards, each suit could be offered in its own month. You visit each of the 13 shops that month and get one, say, spade or heart…. at the end of the 4-month promo, you have the whole set! And the suits themselves provide the promotional theme. Hearts, of course, WE LOVE RESALE. Spades? WE DIG RESALE. Clubs, WE’RE CLUB RESALE and diamonds, RESALE IS A GIRL’S BEST FRIEND? Just quick thoughts, there’s probably better headlines lurking in some resaler’s mind somewhere…
The 2 jokers? Since they’re WILD CARDS (and not everyone needs jokers to have a playable pack!) they could be used as a bonus giveaway, a start or end to the promo, or even as a charitable event: the 13 shops and honored guests get together at a social event and sell/ auction/ raffle off the jokers, proceeds to charity.
Just my thoughts, I’m sure others have come up with more ideas on how to use these decks of cards….
http://www.meetup.com/sacgeeks/pages/Best_of_Geeky_Sacramento_Playing_Cards/
Thanks, Lynda, for providing another page for the sacgeeks meetup site. Very helpful!
I can smell those brain cells in overdrive all the way down here.