A Hawaii Rainbows Rollabana

Max Impact on a Roll
2007 Looking Like a Banner Year
January 9, 2007

You’ve heard ThuderStix. You’ve seen Terrible Towels. What’s next on the gameday giveaway horizon? The smart money seems to be on the Rollabana, a self-rolling handheld banner that is getting more and more TV airtime at major sporting venues.

“That is the key,” says Eric Hillesland, National Sales Director for Max Impact USA, the exclusive distributor of Rollabana products. "Rollabana is an appealing, non-traditional advertising premium that guarantees the corporate sponsor/advertiser that its brand is displayed exactly how they want it to be portrayed to the public, especially when they’re experiencing thousands of impressions during regional and nationally televised sporting events.”

You’ve probably seen the product. Rolled up, it consists of two side-by-side handles. When fans pull them apart, a colorful message appears. Visually striking, well engineered and extremely portable, Rollabana represents a true marriage of convenience between the goals of the fan and the advertiser. Several major accounts have already discovered this to be true, including McDonald’s, Delta Air Lines, Century 21, Yellow Book and The Chicago Sun-Times.

But that’s not the half of it, says Hillesland.

“We are poised to make Rollabana a household name over the next couple of years.”

The Pitt Rollabana design created for a January 2007 ESPN broadcast.

Max Impact will accomplish this by rolling out additional products, ranging from a car-shade size to a do-it-yourself version, the Create-a-bana, which uses a dry-erase technology. This, he predicts, will open up a lot of opportunities on the retail end of things.

So too will the Postabana, which is slated to debut on store shelves at the end of 2007.

“It takes the place of the inexpensive roll-up team and player poster at a very competitive price point,” he says. “You fasten the top of the frame to a wall, and pull down the poster. We have recently developed a hi-res photoprint process on the proprietary Rollabana material, and we are working on a way fans can swap out posters after they have purchased the first one.”

The Rollabana has been on the market for about four years, but 2007 will be the first that has not been consumed by patent infringement battles. That clears the way for the kind of rollout—particularly to holders of league licenses—that Max Impact has long envisioned.