The Marketing Agency Talk

The art of giving promotional gifts is as important as the art of choosing the right promotional gifts, if not more crucial.

Many years ago, when I was a junior account executive to my boss. His stationary tray was filled with little knick knacks that corporate gifts rep piled on him. After one visit by a golf club consultant, my boss casually dropped off a box of ballpoint pens in the office. “Use them, Bob just gave us a box. They should be pretty decent.” Indeed, they were of good quality. We found them very useful but as most of us don’t play golf, we never ever remembered the company’s name.

Later, a rep from a well known paper company dropped by to see our boss. He told our boss that his papers were good for pen writing, pencil sketching and even for photocopier and fax machine. He pulled out a slim plastic canister with a ballpoint pen and a mechanical pencil. He started writing with them. “See, smooth and easy”. I didn’t know if he was referring to his paper or his pen and pencil. What I knew was he left a rim of paper and that canister behind for my boss to further “test” them out at his convenience. My boss did not pass these freebies to us. In fact, when my HR colleague casually mentioned the orange canister looked really cheery, all my boss smile and replied, “I’ll check if he got more of these.” He still did not give them away.

The interesting part to this story was, the ballpoint pen from the golf club company and the paper company were almost identical, save the pen body color, corporate name and logo. So, what made the difference? The presentation!

The first rep dropped a full box on my boss’ lap without a blink. He was saying, “Hey, we got plenty. There’s nothing special about them.” By contrast, the second fellow treated the freebie as something of value. On top of it, there is no relationship between ballpoint pen and golf club. Whilst, ballpoint pen and papers were like fish and water.

When you’re short-listing marketing gifts, keep this story in mind. It is not enough to choose just a suitable gift item. Consider how it is presented. Use your gift as a way to say “We value your business and this is a token of our appreciation”. Never devalue it with your words and mannerism.

Check out my previous post “Tips on Choosing a Promo Gift.”

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