The Power of Promotional Products (and I Don't Mean Pens)

Written on April 11, 2008 by Susan Payton

This will be my last post for a week. I’m going on vacation and TURNING OFF MY COMPUTER, which is a very big deal for me! Exciting things to come for this blog too, so check back in a few weeks!

We all love the little tschotschkes we get at conventions. But think for a minute: which did you keep and which did you throw away? Chances are you got a lot of cheap pens, which you didn’t need. But I’ll bet you got a few items that you told others about simply because they were either:

A) useful
B) innovative

I’ll share a few I’ve gotten recently.

I spun the wheel at a GEICO booth recently and won a set of speakers for my MP3 player. While that might not sound all that exciting, they were made of paper, like a Chinese take-out box. Very unique (and useful).

My husband worked at Yahoo! until very recently. They do something interesting. Usually a company reserves the expensive promotional toys for potential business, but Yahoo! gives them to employees. That makes them feel worthwhile and lets them share in the excitement of the brand. They have dozens of great examples, but this one is an old-school Slinky:

And then finally last Christmas I sent these egg-shaped clocks to my contacts and clients. They’re fun and useful.

My point? Don’t be cheap and stick to traditional pens or notepads. Think creatively. There are so many products out there, there’s virtually no limit to what you can do. Save the more costly items for potential customers but don’t give away something people will throw away.
-Susan

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