I mentioned in the What are the BizGifts? post that not all BizGifts have to be branded. That is still true, even few weeks on . So should you brand or should not you brand ?

Do not worry, you do not have to feel like Hamlet, it all comes down to few points.

• What is the purpose of the business gift or promotional product ?

• What kind of gift you have in mind ?

Rule of a thumb is that for any project aimed at increasing your brand awareness you should brand the promotional products that you are making. At the end it is your brand that you want to spread around.

It is a bit different with the “gifts with purchase” that motivate people to choose your product instead of competitors’ from the store shelf. Here it is important that the gift is attractive enough for people to want it. If the branding fits well on the product, than brand at all means. But if you feel that it would look disturbing or devalue the gift, either minimize the size of your logo or do not brand the gift at all. Not everyone wants to wear T-shirt with huge Durex logo all over the chest .
Another different case would be corporate gifts for your business partners or employees. First you choose carefully the gift. You do not want to send out wrong message. Here people usually choose more valuable items. The quantities are not huge and you do not want to look cheap … Once you have the product in mind, think how would placing your logo affect the product. Some fancy products are well suited for corporate branding directly on the product, but some are not and your own branding may actually destroy the product in the eyes of the receiver. The people who get those gifts will get more from others too. They may want to pass some of them on to their family members or friends instead of keeping them. Your branding may spoil that for them. If you feel that your brand would not do too well on the business gift, create an additional packaging that will bear your brand, make use of a gift card inserted inside the package or simply do not brand at all and pass your message to your business partners in person.

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Another week is over, here is an overview of what was happening here at BizGiftGuru:

• What is the typical timeframe for BizGifts project ? - How much in advance do you need to start working on your promotional products, if you want to have them ready on time.

• How to get dumped by your BizGift supplier - Few hints what to do and what no to do if you want to have good relationship with your business gifts supplier

• Accidental Hero - Lanyard with a Card - A story of desperate last minute solution that turned out to be a hit

• Giveaway Watch Gift Set - Win One ! - Review of pretty good give away gift set.

• The Lanyard Story - How I discovered lanyards

One of the above posts also includes the first ever contest here at BizGiftGuru.com, check it out while you still have time ! Thanks to Contest Hub for writing about this contest !
There is now also BizGiftGuru group on Facebook - check it out and join !

Elsewhere in the blogs, Archondigital reviews the Pantone’s latest product, the PANTONE® Goe System - a completely new color inspiration / specification system.

Slightly off topic, but nice design nevertheless - Isabella Rossellini turns herself into different insects in 8-part short film series Green Porno, to be featured at the Sundance Film Festival and the Berlinale International Film Festival in Berlin this year. LeTrash has more on this.

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I believe it was in January 2001 when I went to Dallas to visit the PPAI Show. Those were the old days before the show moved to Las Vegas. The things on display were the usual mix of pens, wearables, trophies, drinkware, basically the classic promotional product selection we were all used to.

Among all of the above we found some sort of laces. They were all over the place and there were quite a few companies displaying the laces and nothing else. We wondering what the hell is this for and how can a company make living by selling only this weird stuff .

So few days and few drinks later we decided that if such a funny thing like lanyard (by now we knew the proper name) can sell big in the USA, we should be able to sell it in Europe too.

It took a while but we found some manufacturers. The problem was not that they did not exist. The problem was that outside USA those days no one seemed to know what is lanyard, so it was not easy to explain what we are looking for .

After finding the supplier, we prepared some basic collection of different widths, different attachments and worked out costing for different quantities and branding technologies. Lanyards received nice full page in the new catalog, and …

… nothing happened. In the whole first year we made one order, 500 pcs . Such an instant hit these things became . But a year later, the hell broke loose. All of a sudden the lanyards became a must have for everybody. Not as a promotional product, bus as trendy fashion accessory. Massive 2.5 cm (1 inch) wide lanyards were the hottest ones to have … We were glad we were prepared, prepared way too in advance .

These days the lanyards are back where they belong. No longer a hot fashion accessory, but a useful product with prominent logo placement. In the old days all the trade show badges or employee cards and IDs were hanging on simple strings. Now the string is gone and lanyards are in (still). Here are few examples of use:

• Corporate Identity - It is much cheaper to hang company branded lanyard on the neck of each employee than buy uniforms for everybody.

• Events - Entrance tickets, conference passes, trade show badges - All these are often required to be visible on person all the time and that means on the neck these days. The branded lanyards replaced the older strings and even better, the safety pins from the days when it was common to pin the badge on one’s shirt.

• Sponsorship messages - Especially during the events, the lanyards often bear logos not only of the event itself but also of the sponsors. The lanyard is long enough to repeat one logo several times, or to alternate several logos over the length of the lanyard.

• Merchandising - The licensed merchandise is not cheap. Many people would love to have some souvenir after visiting a theme park or a sports match or a museum. Most of the shops these days carry lanyards and people do buy them. Maybe not because they are that great, but because the price makes them relatively affordable when compared to a piece of garment for example.

• Products Accessories - Branded with main product brand and used as camera holders, mobile phone straps (shorter versions also, as wrist straps), binoculars, flashligths …

The lanyards come in different materials (nylon, polyester, satin, cotton…), with different brand applications (print, jacquard, sublimation), with different accessories (clips, phone holders, safety breakaways). The most common widths are 1.5 - 2 cm (5/8 - 3/4″).

Did you know that some of the largest lanyard factories producing millions per year used to make shoe laces just few years back ?

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The garment suppliers, especially the bigger brands, are quite popular at the trade shows because of their giveaways. It is usually just a T-shirt but from time to time they change a strategy. This year at the PSI show Stedman (by Hanes) went for a watch.

This Stedman giveaway package is a good example of how a low budget premium can be produced without looking cheap.

This relatively low cost but decent plastic watch is packed in a nicely made gift box together with a small tool. If you wonder what is the tool for - well, it makes it easier for people to adjust the size of the wristband . The box also comes with CD containing the product catalog.

This style of watch is not my cup of tea but there are definitely enough people who would not mind getting one. And quite a few people lined up in Stedman’s booth to get it . I believe that if a gift manages to draw the attention at the PSI Show, where all the visitors are people who make living selling gimmicks like this, it is probably a good one …

It also serves as a good alternative to a printed catalog. Does not cost much more than a thick catalog but especially if given away at the trade show it is likely to have greater impact. A standalone CD catalog is quite easily lost or misplaced. A CD catalog packed in gift set like this will probably make it back with the potential buyers .

I have one gift box with the watch to give away to BizGiftGuru readers. Simply leave a comment below this article with your opinion on this mini gift pack. I will pick one lucky commentator next Monday and send him/her the watch. Even if you may not like it yourself, there will sure be someone around you happy to wear it .

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About a year ago we had a booth at a large trade show. The weeks before the show were quite busy for us and the exhibition preparations did suffer a bit. At the end we did manage to arrange nice booth set up but we overlooked one thing. Yes, you can guess, we overlooked our own give away goodies for the visitors . We still had left few hundred lanyards we used to give out in the past, but I was not too keen to use them again. We have used them for several shows already and I was becoming bored with them. But as there was nothing else, we had to do with them yet again.

Although we overlooked our tiny little gifts for the visitors, we did prepare quite nice and expensive catalog with our new product line. While the catalogs are printed to be distributed, I do hate when people who will never even look inside them collect them from the booth, just for the sake of collecting them. Waste of paper and money down the drain. Moreover, the catalogs run out pretty fast that way and by the end of the show there are none for the people who are genuinely interested. This happens no matter how many catalogs you bring to the show.

So, on one side we had lanyards as a giveaway we did not really find exciting any more, on the other side a pile of catalogs we wanted to distribute without wasting them. And then the idea came…

We took one of the photos from the catalog (not showing the products themselves, but a colorful and attractive photo) and the theme from the catalog cover. We designed a sort of a name card with the photo and our contact info and the website on one side, the catalog cover theme on the other. We had few hundred of these printed in a 12 hour print shop with a hole punched through at the top of the card.

In the booth we attached the cards to our old lanyards and placed them on a display where they were kind of screaming “Take Me !”. And people were taking them like crazy … The colorful design of the card proved to be very attractive and was actually drawing people into our booth. I could not believe it . Moreover, we could afford to display only one or two of our catalogs as a browsing copies. To our old customers or very serious visitors we gave the catalogs, most of the walk in buyers were happy just to take the contact info on the lanyard with card. Those who were serious enough and contacted us after the show received the catalogs by mail.

This is how a small colourful card turned a leftover giveaway into accidental hero

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