Benjamin’s Musings

promotional items

In business, everything is money.  Your clients are money generators, your employees are expenses that help make more money, your money itself is a tool to make more money.  Even your time is money, as well as advertising.  In this universe of revenue and bottom lines, it’s funny that promotional items play such a big part of the business model.  On the surface, it seems like promotional gifts and business gifts don’t really generate money.  After all, these items are, by definition, freely given.  However, it’s amazing what a simple free sample, test drive, or free beta release of a product will do for future sales.
 People usually don’t buy things that they can’t imagine themselves using.  Usually this isn’t a problem, since advertising and word-of-mouth reviews are sufficient to get people’s imaginations going so that they convince themselves that they’d be much happier owning a certain product.  But other times, it’s simply impossible to get people to want a product that they can’t imagine liking, let alone ever heard of.  This is where promotional items come in.
 By providing a promotional item, companies can give people a taste of what it’s like to use or own their product.  This is often the best form of advertising, since the potential customers are actually using the items in their daily life.  The use of promotional gifts is especially useful for smaller companies, who may not be as well known or have sufficient resources to advertise and make themselves known.
 I was at the farmer’s market last Friday and saw this concept in action.  Ok, maybe this isn’t the best example, but I think the principle still holds for larger companies and more substantial products who offer much more substantial business gifts, but here it goes.  I was perusing the farmer’s market stands looking at various fruits.  I usually skip the vegetable stands since I don’t cook, and I don’t consider spinach or fava beans as especially tasty foods I can snack on as I’m walking around.  However, cherries (which are in season now) and strawberries are awesome.
 Anyways, one of the vendors was handing out slices of white nectarines with metal tongs.  I grabbed one mindlessly and started to eat it and move on when I was struck by the sheer deliciousness of that nectarine.  I ended up buying three on the spot since it was so good, even though my heart was still set on cherries and strawberries.  Main point: promotional items work!