Earlier this month, Leah Messinger wrote an interesting piece on "quality swag" and its potential ROI. For those who do not recognize the terms, "swag" is a gift or free service that a company offers to potential clients, typically at events such as trade shows. Some award shows package all of the gifts together in ‘swag bags' for the guests. ROI stands for "return on investment," the rate of return which is used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment. The ROI of swag is important because once the products are created, they are a sunk cost, and I am sure many companies find themselves tossing pens and highlighters that were never given out at any shows.
From the article, the reader can discern three important ‘take-away notes' on creating a useful giveaway:
Make it personal
ValueClick made and delivered cupcakes to several important business relations to emphasize their company's birthday. Not only was it a great conversation starter, but who doesn't love free food at the workplace? It was easy to remember who gave the item and why they did so.
Make it keep people involved
Rove Mobile handed out keys at one trade show, several of which could be used to open a safe and receive a cash check at the end of the show. This ingeniously kept people coming back to the booth, opening up more channels of conversation and small talk.
Make it creative
We all have a desk full of companies' pencils, pens, and notepads, but what about picture frames, yo-yos, and thumbtacks? Creativity doesn't have to be expensive, and it easily separates your company from the pack.
Swag can also be used for employees just as well as it can be used for potential clients. I love Earthlink's idea of giving new employees a bag full of Earthlink tools and clothing. In that very same year, they experienced a 50% lower turnover rate with their new employees. Employees cherish a friendly and team-oriented atmosphere at work, which I am certain the swag helped foster.
Why do I bring this up? Well, recently five employees from The Bivings Group went to the Personal Democracy Forum to represent and promote ImpactWatch. You can read our impressions of PDF here, here, here, here, and here. Beforehand, we bounced around ideas for new swag that we could use to make an impression on the crowd. We were talking politicians and journalists here, people who have seen enough swag in their lifetime to probably build a house out of personalized pencils.
I'm pretty proud of the items that we ended up using. The first was a stressball connected to a springy line, which made it a hybrid between a stressball and a yo-yo. Not only was it a good conversation starter, but it put a smile on my face to see journalists playing with them during the speeches. Secondly, knowing that we had lots of computer people in our midst, we gave out keyboard brushes with the ImpactWatch logo on them. Finally, the PDF had its own versions of swag bags to give away, so we created a carbineer/highlighter combo to stick in those. They were all a big hit, and we definitely got the ImpactWatch name out to many new people.
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