Playground Fortune Teller becomes new idea for advertising and promotional giveaway

Do you remember as a child when you folded up a square piece of paper in a certain way so that it made a fortune teller? It was the thing that you worked with your fingers and thumbs, opening it backwards, forwards and sideways and then your friend had to pick a number or a colour? Then when you opened the number, it meant that your friend had to kiss Shirley Spencer or it said that his breath smelt of poo!

Well, requests to make these commercially have been trickling into one promotional company for years and they have finally succumbed to pressure. Whitney Woods has the UK’s largest range of cardboard promotional pop-up products and interactive mailers and the “Fortune Teller” is the latest addition to its ranks.

So what is so special about producing a folded piece of paper that a kid can make? You might well ask – but can you remember how to do it?

The company’s marketing manager, Helen Mihill, explains, “We have been asked to produce this product on maybe 20 occasions down the years but we have always declined to make it as it seemed not to fit in with our range of pop-ups and interactive mailers. But our clients have been more persistent of late and so we have designed a custom printed product which has a combination of creases and perforations to make the folding pattern relatively easy. We are happy to produce the Fortune Tellers ready-folded or flat with a sheet of printed instructions for folding.”

All well and good, but why would a company use one – whatever could they do with it? Mihill continues, “Our research has shown that agencies have been coming up with ideas for the product as an interactive marketing piece to hand out at exhibitions and conferences. Trade show giveaways are a very popular use for quite a few of our products. Another company wanted to use one as an invitation to a corporate event.”

The Whitney Woods Fortune Teller measures 200 x 200mm when flat and folds down to a nice size to fit your fingers and thumbs. The company’s range of sample Fortune Tellers have been produced on 115gsm Mellotex printed on one side in 4 colour process and feature a selection of witty quotations.