What’s better than free stuff? More of it! We love it and the more we don’t need it, the more we truly crave it. It has become a true badge of honor to be able to show off your “Swag” especially when you have something that someone doesn’t have. It’s the type of petty, adolescent, one-upmanship that we all indulge in, say we don’t care about and yet if anyone screws with your stuff, you’d gut then from their nose to their knees!

I’ve seen people in offices, agencies, banks, hospitals go ballistic when someone messes with their swag. It doesn’t matter what it is, it’s just the fact that you violate the unwritten code of touching someone else’s swag. Even the crappy stuff makes people totally paranoid and territorial. A colleague of mine lost her job when she freaked on a colleague for hiding one of her beanie babies (remember those stupid things?) back in the mid 1990s and my ex-colleague slapped the perpetrator in the face. Unlawful touching of a beanie baby is serious stuff to a collector.

What was once derisively referred to as “trinkets and trash” not that long ago is now an almost $20 billion industry according to the Advertising Specialty Institute. http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/news-and-features/promotion/e3if0819d6addd2a0fe3b7a46b87f92137f?imw=Y
That’s right, $20 billion! That’s a lot of pens and key chains. Actually, it’s a lot cooler stuff than that and the key chains now all have flash sticks and the pens do a whole lot more than write upside down. Ask people what they remember about a brand and its always the promotional products, premiums and incentives, or if you prefer, SWAG!

Give people free stuff and you have a friend for life. Trade shows rock when it comes to Swag. The entertainment trade shows leave everyone else in their wake when it comes to Swag. I’m a Swag Snob, because I won’t take any pens, t-shirts, key chains or anything else unless it is something that I haven’t seen before and that’s a tall order because in advertising, you’re almost always sourcing out some sort of Swag for a client initiative. Plus I’ve been going to trade shows for the past 25 years, at least 1 a month, so you do the math… I avoid mugs because I don’t drink coffee or tea, but when those metallic jobs started showing up in the past 10+ years, I made a lot of caffeine junkies my new BFF on the spot with those bad boys! Always know your audience and then mow ‘em down… http://www.asicentral.com/

When I was at the CES in Vegas last January, it raised the SWAG bar to a new high. I love trade shows because you have a captive audience and I like to walk a lot and see new things in a captive setting. The Consumer Electronic Show was even too big for me! If you’re the new guy at the office and you want to make friends and influence people, forget that dude Dale Carnegie, give your new colleagues free crap! The best way to get cool free stuff (that we can wow clients with) is act like you don’t want it. I got a free, polypropylene, custom-fit laptop backpack by being highly skeptical to the person trying to impress me with how amazing it was… http://www.builtny.com/

People have stopped me in airports asking where I got it and I’ve been offered money for it twice. I said no. Does your swag get you offers like that? I’m sure yours doesn’t, but mine does! Clients love giving away Swag because there is nothing to misunderstand about it and they get to feel all benevolent about it. Want to have a client for life? Get them the coolest SWAG item in the world and then wait a little while, maybe six months and check eBay and I’ll bet you a donut that if it’s cool, somebody will be trying to buy it. Clients love stuff like that! I’ve done it twice in the last 5 years. Email me and I’ll tell you how I did it!

I doubt I’ll ever have to buy a flash stick again and I only take t-shirts that have graphic prints on them (there are plenty of those out there) that the quality of the cotton is better than anything you can buy in a store. The big ticket items also include really great quality leather cell phone holders that look just like wallets. Key chains that have tiny flashlights on them so powerful, you can read by them when you are camping out or hopelessly lost. My favorite are the prepaid gift cards that the comapnies who produce them gladly giveaway free MP3s, iTunes, free fast food, discounts on gas, $5, $10 and I even got a $25 card in a drawing!

The ROI that free swag delivers, never disappoints. They resonate, they are cost-effective, low maintenance recommendations and are typically a turn-key, drop shipping fast solution. Think they still don’t work? Look at how people would kill to get their hands on the swag that gets loaded up into the goodie bags that celebs get when they go to the annual Academy Awards. I’ll let you know when I go! There are two types of SWAG people: the people who are shameless SWAGGERS like me and the others who don’t admit to this silly, guilty pleasure!

JOEL KIRSTEIN is a Creative Director who has been in the Ad Agency trenches for 25 years and the only people that don’t like SWAG are the ones who don’t deserve it or never get any! Karma knows…

Article Tags: Advertising Specialty Institute | premiums and incentives | promotional products | ROI | swag | trinkets and trash
Filed under: Interactive, OUT-OF-HOME, Uncategorized, advertising, branding