Wherever you look you see collection of something on display. OK, maybe not wherever, but collecting stuff is something that people definitely like to do. They do not even mind if the stuff is not useful. A thing looking OK would often do. Sometime they do not even have to look OK, as long as it is cool to collect them .

Marketing campaigns quite often exploit this human inclination to collecting things. Look around the shops, supermarkets, restaurants and see how often you see some sort of “Collect them all !” or “Get them all !” message on a poster or a board. Well, this is because these things do work if done right. And so promotional products are often made in sets and meant to be collected.

One of the first projects we handled after setting up our business about a decade ago was a set of retro design coasters. The idea from client (or his agency, that I do not remember) was simple. What would people do if they see a really nice coffee coaster attached to the pack of coffee in a supermarket? There is a chance they choose that pack of coffee to get the coaster. And what if they come back to the supermarket again and see the same coffee but with different coaster ? And next to it a poster announcing few more designs coming out soon ? The “collector mentality” would very likely kick in. People may feel that by drinking what they always drink anyway (but sticking to the same brand) they may collect a nice coffee coaster set. And so our client went for it.

The original plan was a set of 4 coasters. The coasters were made of offset printed tin with cork backing and frankly, they looked great. Moreover the coaster is light and flat product, perfect for attaching to the pack of coffee. The campaign turned out to be a huge success and after only a month or so another 4 designs were added. Later on the best collectors received also a storage box for the coasters, also in retro design. All together almost 2 million pieces of coasters were produced. I sure did not complain …

Promotions like this can work miracles and usually do. But that does not mean they always turn out well . More on that in part 2.

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I keep getting in the mail all kinds of irresistible offers for magazine subscriptions with all sorts of freebies offered in return. Usually I simply throw them to the waste paper bin right away as I have way too many things to read already. But from time to time some of them make it through my mailbox firewall and I do get a chance to see what is on offer. And so here is an opportunity to compare how valuable new subscribers are to Time Magazine and International Herald Tribune. These are also the examples of promotional products or business gifts that do not have to be branded.

Time Magazine offers free binoculars with either 12 or 24 months subscription. The 12 months deal costs HKD702 (around USD90), 24 months HKD1,350 (around USD175).

I know this particular model quite well. The binoculars are not too bad, actually better than they look on the order form. Pretty handy and compact piece of equipment but not exactly professional stuff. But comparing to some gifts Time Magazine featured in the past, this one is quite an improvement. I would say a fair deal for someone who spends 90 dollars for a magazine, but not really a motivation to sign up for 2 years.

International Herald Tribune’s Order Form (click to view) offers 362 issues (12 + 2 months) for HKD2,850 (about USD367) or 90 issues (3 + 2 months) for HKD974 (about USD125). There is no gift with the 90 issues subscription but IHT offers a Waterman Hemisphere ball pen with the 362 issues deal.

It is not exactly clear form the photo what version of Waterman Hemisphere is the one offered, but I would suspect it would be one of the cheaper ones that retail between USD30 - USD40 a piece. This is a gift that comes with USD367 subscription.

So who does better job here ?

Time is offering a decent but a no name and non-professional product, IHT a nice pen from one of the most reputable pen manufacturers.My vote would go hands down for IHT and the Waterman Hemisphere pen. Although the pen is more expensive than the binoculars the difference is not as big as it may seem. What is very different however is the perceived value for the recipient and here Waterman definitely wins.

I think Time would be better off offering higher value brand name gifts in return for longer subscription period (at least 2 years) and have some simple souvenir ready for those who choose shorter periods.

But as I mentioned above these binoculars are a step forward. I remember a year or so back Time Magazine had a very cheap radio as a gift. Few weeks later they got slammed by one of their readers in the “Letters to the Editor” for that **** piece of plastic producing static and noise only … Well, that is what one gets for being cheap .

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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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