When you are thinking what BizGift to use in your campaign you need to think about the audience you are trying to reach. Once you identify your audience then you design a promotional product or business gift that matches the target of your campaign. When you are thinking about business gift proper (something you give as an expression of “Thank You” to your business partners) you should think whether the gift will be appreciated by the recipient. Here is one example of business gift that did not hit the target …

End of the year, the time before Christmas, is usually the peak business gifts giving season. Many companies are choosing BizGift with some Christmas theme or gifts that evoke the Christmas atmosphere. There are several countries in Europe where watching the 35 years old Czech movie Three Nuts For Cinderella (Tři oříšky pro Popelku) has been part of the Christmas experience for years. According to Wikipedia it became “a holiday classic in many European countries. It is shown on TV around Christmas time every year in the Czech Republic, Germany, Slovakia, Switzerland, and Norway”. I will not name the country here, but it was in one of the above where KPMG took a theme from this movie as an idea for their business gift.

The theme - Cinderella gets 3 hazelnuts and each of the hazelnuts grants her one wish. KPMG decided to use the 3 nuts as a corporate gift.

One thing I can tell when looking the product, even when it does not look like that, it probably was not cheap to make. It was handmade in Europe and there was sure quite a bit of manpower necessary to produce this. Also to the credit of whoever produced this product, it was made in a protected workshop (a place providing jobs to disabled people).

The problem is, the end result is very cheap looking product. The huge waste-of-paper box is pretty much empty. And visibly empty thanks to the large size clear window. The string that suspends the walnuts in the box is way too long. As a result, instead of nicely hanging there the three walnuts lie down at the bottom of the box, lonely as a Cinderella …

When I saw this first I thought there must be something more to this. Perhaps the nuts are fake and there is something hidden inside. So I cracked one of the walnuts open … Well, no surprise, the walnut was real, although not edible

The authors did not even pay enough attention to detail, and used walnuts instead of hazelnuts … Perhaps they should have used the hazelnuts. They are much smaller, they could have placed them in a smaller cuter box and use it as a sort of a gimmick along with a proper business gift. Well they did not …

They used this paper box with 3 nuts lying at the bottom as their business gift proper. I am not sure what was the thinking behind this but I saw the reaction of one of the recipients, not an unimportant KPMG client. Shaking head and wondering: “What is this ?” I took the box from him and asked few other people what they think about this. Maybe I asked wrong people, but I did not find a single one thinking this nutbox was a good idea for a gift from company like KPMG.

In the worst case, a wrong choice of corporate gifts may offend the recipient - usually a business partner or prospective client. Unless you have some hidden agenda, offending your business partners and clients is the last thing you want to achieve by spending your money on business gifts.

It may not be a bad idea to test your ideas on few people you know first …

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Every company or small business sooner or later finds itself in need of some promotional product or BizGift. The big guys hire and pay advertising or PR agency to organize a whole PR or marketing campaign for them. The BizGifts fitting the whole promo are usually included. Many small companies and businesses (or individuals) often do not have the resources for such a complete advertising package, but still need some promoproduct. At the end, we all want to spread the news that we are here, and name cards often end up in the trash bin

It is not that easy to choose the right one. Once you get your hands on a catalog of a decent BizGift distributor you will see 250 - 500 pages of colorful pictures with thousands of products on them. Well the big selection is definitely great, but for a newbie it may be an overwhelming experience. My suggestion here would be:

“Take your time to think, but while you are thinking, order some pens first. You can’t go wrong with them.”

Well you can go wrong if you receive pens that do not write or fall apart but as an advertising medium there is not much wrong with as simple product as a pen. And if you look at the pie I posted here last week, you can see that many buyers share this idea.

Here are few reasons why the pen would be a good starter:

• They are very economical

• You can get them at as small quantity as 50 pcs already branded

• You can have them quick, 3-5 days or even overnight if you are desperate enough to pay a surcharge

• Everybody needs a pen to write

• People loose them and people steel them from each other your message will travel around quite a bit

• They are small and light, easy and cheap to mail

A 50 pcs 1 color branded plastic pens order (with all the print set up fees that eat quite a bit into the total costing at so low quantity) will set you back around USD100 + postage for less than 2 lbs… You can bring your unit cost down by ordering more. The total cost of getting 50 pcs or 100 pcs is not that different.

If you ad a bit more metal parts to the plastic pen it will cost a bit more, but USD150 will probably be enough (+ the postage of course). You can also go for sleek aluminum stuff if you are ready to fork out USD200 for your first 50 pcs lot of BizGifts.

You would not probably want to use a plastic pen as a present for your business partner or a good customer. But even in those cases pens can do the job. You can simply walk into a shop with fancy pens and get one there. Shops selling the expensive brands like Mont Blanc or Cartier or Parker usually provide also engraving services even if you buy just one pen. But before spending the serious buck on the deluxe pen better make sure the person you plan to give it too will appreciate it. For some people pen is a pen, no matter if it costs you USD200 for hundred pieces or USD200 a piece…

There may be many other promotional products more fitting your needs than the pens. But before you figure out what they are, do not waste your time. Start with the pen and build from there …

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