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Puzzle Marketing

We can define the “Puzzle Marketing” as the employment of the photo puzzles within a marketing strategy.

puzzle cards and clamshells for marketing

Nowadays, digital print technology allows us to create a wide range of personalized gadgets and custom products at a very inexpensive price.

Amongst these gadgets we have also the photo puzzles, which are the famous jigsaw puzzles – the hobby that filled our spare time in childhood and maybe even in our adult life – illustrating a picture or a drawing of our choice.

Venus Puzzle, for example, is a Digital Print company that allows us to create online our own custom jigsaw puzzles by sending them a picture or a high-resolution file of our choice. Browsing the range of products of Venus Puzzle, we can figure that the personalized jigsaw puzzles can fit our marketing strategy in a number of ways, depending on the format and size which we want to use for our puzzles. We can use a real jigsaw puzzle with hundreds or thousands of pieces, or we can use small cards in a jigsaw puzzle fashion and use them as leaflets or even business cards in order to impress our clients, customers, and prospects.

Puzzle Cards and Puzzle Clamshells

Indeed, one of the formats that best fit a marketing strategy is the Puzzle Card or the Puzzle Clamshell. These are available in 6-piece or 15-piece small jigsaw puzzles and in packages of 8, 40 and 100 units. Of course, in this case they are not a game that requires a lot of time to be solved; rather, they represent a “message” which is delivered by the “medium”: the jigsaw puzzle becomes a symbol, a metaphor.

The Puzzle as a Symbol

First of all, the Jigsaw puzzle applied in our marketing tools suggests a playful spirit: it represents a hobby that amuses the mind and makes us have a good time. Maybe it reminds us of our childhood, but the puzzle is definitely also a metaphor of our adult life.

The puzzle is a symbol of the enigma that needs to be solved, so, in this way, it is a metaphor of the life, of the quest, of the path to self-realization.

How many times in life or in our work we are under the impression that we have to put the pieces of a puzzle together in order to understand what to do or what to expect!

Finally, there is the symbol of the different pieces that fit together: this might suggest the relationship between the company and its client or its client’s needs. The company becomes the entity providing the client with the “missing pieces”!

Moreover, the puzzle might be the symbol of the two people joining together in the marriage (see furthermore).

Examples of the employment of jigsaw puzzles in the marketing strategy

Promotional puzzles represent an innovative and original way to deliver the company’s message and let the clients know that you are the “missing piece”, that piece they have been seeking for a long time.

No one can resist if they find themselves in front of a jigsaw puzzle ready to be solved: they have to put the pieces together, they have to discover the message, they have to see the original complete picture!

Using our logo, our brochure or other advertising material and make them into a jigsaw puzzle is a funny and effective way to deliver one’s message and make our clients remember us better.

Obviously, depending on our purposes, we can use a Puzzle Card, a Puzzle Clamshell or a real Jigsaw Puzzle of hundreds or even thousands of pieces.

A present for your employees

The idea of making a personalized photo puzzle of 1000 or 2000 pieces illustrating our logo or other corporate image might be an excellent idea for a present to give to our employees in order to strengthen their team spirit and make everyone feel like they are part of a big group, like they are part of a big family.

Again the puzzle becomes a metaphor, with all their pieces fitting perfectly together, of all the parts of the company that work together to make a bigger unique entity leading toward a common vision.

A present for your clients

A personalized photo puzzle can be given obviously also as a present for your most important clients, maybe with a nice picture referring somehow to your company or its vision, maybe also with a nice quote that represents your company or its vision. In this case the message that is delivered through the ‘medium’ jigsaw puzzle is that your company and its client are part of a whole entity that find a mutual benefit in their reciprocal relationship, a relationship which is enduring and profitable, a relationship made of needs that fit perfectly together.

Puzzle Marketing for tourism industry

If your business is in the tourism industry, maybe you can already benefit from a range of visual material representing beautiful sceneries where you are settled or representing your own structure in its environment… Let’s think about, for example, a farm holiday house in a gorgeous countryside: you can then sell or give to your guests, for free, a nice 1000-piece photo puzzle or maybe a “panoramic puzzle” so your guests to have a nice visual memory of the place where they had a good time. Surely they will set the puzzle up and hang it on the wall of their lounge in order to show their friends how beautiful was the place where they spent their holiday! This way you might be able to spread the word and get some new clients for your business.

Puzzle Marketing for event planning

Maybe for a graduation party, for a wedding party, for a baptism or other religious nature celebration… or maybe for a public event such as an opening ceremony or a big corporate meeting… you can send jigsaw puzzle invitations (Puzzle Cards or Puzzle Clamshells) and impress your target audience, switching on their interest and attention. The recipient of the puzzle invitation will be challenged to solve the puzzle (in this case, just a small puzzle of 6 or 15 pieces) in order to read the message and find out the date and the address of the event.

So, the puzzle invitation becomes yet a metaphor of a scavenger hunt game, of a quest, of a research. This way it will almost suggest the exclusivity of the event, an event destined only for those who are able to “solve the enigma”. Obviously it’s just a game – yet easy to solve – but the message that is delivered is what matters.

As mentioned above, in the case of a wedding, the jigsaw puzzle invitation adds further meanings to the ‘message’: the puzzle becomes a metaphor of the union between bride and groom… they found each other the “missing pieces”, the parts of their souls merge together fitting perfectly. What a beautiful message to send to family and friends when you invite them to the wedding ceremony!

Puzzle Marketing for photographers

As described above, a photo puzzle has a complex of meanings when it comes to a wedding. A nice offer for a wedding photographer might be to let the couple choose the best picture of their wedding or their engagement session and have it turned into a 1,000 or 2,000-piece photo puzzle.

The setting up of the pieces might be even a bonding moment for the couple, a sort of magic ceremonial, symbolic act that reinforces their union: they are working together as a team to solve a common task and the create an image representing their union. I wonder if it may help marriage counselors in their work!

Of course, since every picture can be turned into a photo puzzle, a photographer can add this service to their offer: there are many people that simply are not aware that it is so easy and cheap to turn a picture into a puzzle! This can be applied for a number of occasions and for a number of clients.

Visit www.venuspuzzle.com to find out what else you can make with a photo puzzle!

Did this article give you some ideas of how to apply puzzle marketing to your marketing strategy?

Then I want definitely to read your comment below!

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One response to “Puzzle Marketing”

  1. Dear Jonathan,
    Thanks for your helpful feedback. I’m a freelance journalist in Switzerland and plan a story on the public’s interest in jigsaw puzzles – one of the few upbeat aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic. I’ve already contacted a few major firms in the sector for input on their sales success during the lockdown, but I’d like to update readers on what’s happening now that Covid is largely under control. Is the public still keen on 1,000-piece puzzles? Or are we back to pre-Covid days? Thus your input was very welcome. I’m wondering if I could find anyone on the Barcelona staff who could sum up Educa’s situation in Europe (Amazon.com handles their marketing in the USA, and I’m an Amazon author). But they’re no help in Europe. I’d appreciate any tips you can offer. I’d like to keep in touch, as your contacts may find my creative nonfiction work of interest.
    All the best, Lyn Shepard

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