David Grossman, co-president of Grossman Marketing Group (asi/215205), has an eye for detail. You have to if you’re putting together a campaign that should evoke luxury and cohesion. Otherwise, a branded kit becomes nothing more than an assortment of unrelated products in a box, and that isn’t what the client asks for.

That quest for brand cohesion and upscale aesthetic starts, Grossman says, with color. The project? A welcome kit for customers on the EF Go Ahead Tour, including tote bags, luggage tags, lanyards, caps, cookbooks, printed papers, informational pieces, all packaged together in a branded box, and it had to look every bit as luxurious as the company’s tours.

“They specialize in a high-end clientele that are looking to go on premium travel experiences,” Grossman said. “This suite of materials that we were working on for them, it needed to convey a curated sense of luxury, yet practicality.”

This meant usable items, like the luggage tags and wearables, and Pantone-matching the brand’s shade of green across different substrates.

“Mixing and matching different shades of the same color doesn’t really give that curated feel,” he said. “For this project in particular, we started with the canvas bags. We went through multiple dip samples to get the dye just right, and then used that as a basis for everything else, as it’s much easier to adjust printing ink, whether in the mix or actually on press, than the dye.”

Much like the tour guides from the client wouldn’t set out on a trek without a map, Grossman also warned distributors looking to add promo to their print business, or vice versa, to know where they’re going before they set out in search of fortune, so to speak.

“Too many printers get into promo like, ‘Oh, me too, me too,’ because they don’t want to be left behind,” he said. “But that almost ensures that it’s never going to go anywhere and ends up being a distraction rather than a growth engine and real profit center.”