I came upon this article recently telling companies around the world to stop making swags for giveways for many reasons but mainly; immense carbon footprint of the materials used to manufacture the giveaways usually end up in trash; sustaining bad worker welfare by contribution to the demand of cheap goods made at factories in countries with poor workers’ welfare protection and low environmental regulations.
I’ll be honest, swags are only appreciated by fans of the brand. Being a corporate suit I prefer to use items from companies that I respect, such as Google. Swags given to brand believers like me are well worth the investment, we would put those swags to good use, put on them public display for the world to see and eventually advocate more users to these brands that I love or use and pay off that marketing cost of making swags.
However you and I know the swags referred here are those cheap things made just for the sake of being given away, without a second thought if they are even worth making. Believe me, giveaways are pointless unless they have a proper purpose. I’ve been to enough business and consumer conferences and can tell you there’s not a lot of useful things you can give away, but they are pretty useful enough to avoid ending up in landfills:
BUSINESS CONFERENCE
- A tote bag of decent size – to help me carry all the stuff that I may collect during the conference, product brochures, business cards.
- Battery bank / charging cables – is there anyone you know that doesn’t need to charge their phones? If not a battery bank at least the cable to allow you to plug into those powered USB outlets
- Stress ball – every one there is stressed, specially the organizers or those having booths at the expo or conference. Being holed up at the same spot for 3 days is nerve wrecking.
- Wet wipes – why not? After a day of shaking over 20 hands – aren’t you a bit concerned that your hands are a bit too dirty to touch that sandwich you managed to get for your quick lunch?
CONSUMER FAIRS
- A tote bag of decent size – to help me carry those groceries that I’ll be buying in the future, also you are helping a consumer in paying off their need for a tote bag for general use
- Battery bank / charging cables – refer to above
- Google cardboard – this may be the easiest thing to justify to your bosses – it’s something that everyone would use with the growing number of movies to consume in VR but no average consumer would want to spend money on buying their own. So – make a nice cut minimalistic looking box that looks beautiful no matter where you put it so your target customers aren’t embarassed to use it all the time. At least you gave them something that they’ll want to use as long as they can. Make one that is large enough for phones up to 6.5″ and you got a winner
Companies will take time to wake up and realize how useless swags are and how much of a nuisance it would be to throw them away. While they wise up, why not help give consumers things they would need to use on a daily basis? Just make the items look cool and not embarassingly covered with your brand logo and you’ll be alright.
What do you think? Leave a comment if you’re free. I wanna hear more from corporate suits out there