Swag that Actually Works

One of the most timeless marketing tools is swag, or merch, or promos, or giveaways… Who doesn’t love free stuff?! It’s so easy to slap your logo on anything and so easy to give it away. Unfortunately, it can be hard to know if your investments are paying off because people are so willing to take something off your hands, even if they know they’re probably not going to use it or keep it. It was free! Did the thing you produced with your marketing budget actually drive greater sales? Or did it just end up in the trash? Or worse, did it actually hurt your reputation somehow?!

We think about that constantly at Woolston Inventive. When we fail to ask the question about whether we are producing effective swag, we end up investing money and time and creativity into products that are low-value and disregarded. And it’s not just us that pays the cost, there are also production, space, and environmental costs that others in our interconnected global supply chain bear.

Clearly there is immense value in producing swag that represents you well. It drives immediate sales. It reminds your target to come back to you later (as long as it’s sticky). And it’s fun! It’s fun for you coming up with these ideas and seeing them come to fruition, and fun for your targets to enjoy a small (or sometimes not so small) gift. But if your swag is not well-matched to what you offer, then in a best-case scenario it is wasted, and in a worst-case scenario it actively undermines your effort.

Consider a few quick examples:

• Products that are usually a bad idea because they are inevitably low quality (squishy balls)

• Products that don’t have an immediate use or home (fidget spinner craze, fun for a minute but now what do I do with this?)

• Products that run counter to your identity or your work (maybe water bottles for a beverage company!)

Then there’s a whole category of “lazy” swag: Products that are useful and well regarded so they will actually have some staying power, but because there’s no direct connection to your identity or your work and because they are ubiquitous and “everyone is doing them,” they don’t help you. This is why you see so many sweatshirts, keychains, water bottles, etc. There’s nothing wrong with these as swag per se, but they are literally a commodity: exchangeable and (worse) discardable by the person to whom you give them.

So how do you come up with effective swag? Let’s consider some concrete examples:

Bubbles at the Party

We worked with a university that had a community presence at a local block party. This was an outdoor summer event for families. We helped them brand bottles of bubbles that created the perfect low-cost event add-on. It contributed directly to the festive outdoor summer ambiance and gave the university high visibility as bubbles drifted throughout the entire block all afternoon.

Balls at the Party

For the same event we identified a similar match: the small rubber super bouncy ball. These are perfect for an outdoor space and add significantly to something like a block party. They are incredibly inexpensive, and a rare opportunity to distribute a toy that people will love and hang on to (unless it bounces too far away!). It will serve as a souvenir of the event, and one that you frankly can’t give out in a lot of venues. (Can you imagine giving out hundreds of these in an expo hall or at a school?)

Spinning Tops

To that end, what kind of “fidget” toy can you give people in a fixed location? Not fidget spinners, that craze crashed like a tidal wave and quickly receded, probably (hopefully) forever. Popper toys, while still popular, are often perceived as being cheap and low quality. We worked with a university that considered this in their school recruitment to come up with the idea of a top. This is also an incredibly inexpensive toy that is fun (and mesmerizing!) to play with. Importantly, the toy is far more “localized,” which means it’s far less likely to get someone in trouble than a bouncy ball that could fly anywhere.

Instrumental Accessories

In the world of music recruitment there is a ton of opportunity, because just about every instrument has a ton of accompanying accessories and often some of those are very inexpensive. As always, the trick is finding the most relevant one to brand and share. We worked with the faculty for a Studio and Jazz Guitar program at a music school in their recruitment promotion who gravitated quickly toward a music pick. If you play guitar, you almost can’t have too many of these lying around! Then it’s never a problem if you lose your pick, share it with someone else, or toss it to the crowd after a performance!

Leaving a Bowl with a Bowl

We worked with a university that held an annual Ethics Bowl, an invitational event for high-achieving seniors. This was an important recruitment event for them and they gave prizes and scholarships to the top finishers, but they also wanted to recruit everyone in attendance. We helped them come up with a relevant participation swag idea that really resonated: It’s a “bowl” event, why not give them an actual bowl? Bowls (or large mugs) are incredibly popular for hot drinks, soup, ice cream, etc., especially with the teen crowd that they were working so hard to recruit.

Complementing Paper

The Speech & Debate crowd is a similar population: high-achieving, highly desirable, and strongly recruited by every university. There is a whole infrastructure and event series for teens to participate in: impromptu, extemporaneous, interpretation, oratory, etc. We worked with a university that hosted a large-scale event prior to the utter ubiquity of cell phones when competitors had lots of paper to keep organized. We helped them produce an attractive clip for paper that promoted the school and that they could give out liberally at the event. It was an easy takeaway with lots of applications throughout the house (even as a chip clip for instance!). (Note that today we would take a different approach more cognizant of the reduced use of paper to organize notes and arguments, which is the entire point of this case study!)

Zipper Pulls

One university we worked with had a religious studies program that was also looking for some kind of swag they could share with prospective students that would have staying power. We searched for something that would be easy to keep in a variety of locations and still represent the school and the program, and came up with a zipper pull. A zipper pull has obvious uses for apparel, but is versatile enough to be usable with backpacks, keys, and other places. We used the iconic cross that was so emblematic for that university. It was so popular that we did a second version featuring another important school icon.

Keychains with Meaning

Just about everyone gives out keychains. They’re popular because they have both inherent value and a place to live, which means they have at least some staying power automatically. We helped one university come up with a keychain that would have much more inherent meaning, leading people to keep it longer. By offering prospective students a keychain attached to a branded graduation cap, they reminded recipients of the long-term goal of graduation, and practically guaranteed that students would keep it for at least four years!

Keychains with Use

The other way to motivate people to keep a keychain is to give them one with a lot of use. We helped another university with a staff gift by branding a slim keychain multitool. Staff found it easy to hang on to because it was both unobtrusive and convenient to use.

Playing Games

One final example comes from our work with a program that was present at countless conferences and trade shows throughout the year where they were represented not just by professional staff but by other people associated with the organization. They needed something that would be inexpensive to ship to the location, easy to use and share by the person who would be attending regardless of who that was, and that could fit well the tremendous stretches of exhibition time with busy and dead periods both. This was definitely not going to be a paper or other promotional brochure! So we branded a series of game cubes or patience puzzles. These were immense fun to play with for long stretches of downtime, both satisfying and frustrating… in a good way! They were extremely attractive to passers-by, but also to colleagues and competitors! They were also something of an evergreen draw given the sheer number of game options, inviting people who had already taken one to pass by again later on during the event and see if there were any new puzzle cubes. Plus they generated tremendous word of mouth buzz as people shared them with their friends!

Here are half a dozen (plus!) examples of strategically choosing swag that will actually improve your reputation. With creativity and collaboration you can produce next-level swag that is extraordinarily effective and will drive your sales and access.