Creating Promotional Products with Personality

Giving away promotional products can be a sensational way to improve your brand visibility and foster customer loyalty. Yet often they don’t work, especially when you insist on distributing bland, generic products that are easy to forget.

personality

Some companies seem to think that it’s enough to place their brand name and logo on the product, but it’s not. You have to infuse your product with the personality that you want to associate with your brand. Here are a few tips on how to inject some life and personality into giveaways and promotional items.

  1. Pick a product that’s useful. This is always one easy way to make your promotional item memorable. After all, how can customers forget it if they always use it? It is best if the item is “useful” in a way that’s connected with your industry too. So ballpoint pens are out if you’re a high-tech company. Follow Twitter’s example, they distributed small USB chargers.
  2. Opt for nontraditional items. It can be something new or you can follow a recent trend. For example, the selfie stick—an item that nobody thought to give away a decade ago—is now a very popular choice for companies. If everyone’s offering T-shirts or coffee mugs, be different and go for athletic shorts or whiskey shot glasses. If you want to be non-traditional, you should avoid giving away the top 10 most popular promo items. The name of the game is innovation through ‘wow’ factors and you don’t have to spend too much for you to give away something new. Instead of mugs, give away saucers instead!
  3. Choose memorable colours. Your promotional items should be eye-catching, so now is not the time for subtle colours. Go for neons instead of gray, white, or black. Or you can use your brand colours as well. As long as it’s shiny and conspicuous, the color is great.
  4. Match the personality of the promotional item with your brand’s identity. You probably cultivate a conservative brand image if you’re a bank or a law firm. The same qualities should be evident on your promotional items too. So you can distribute elegant stationery for your clients. Now if your brand is more fun in its image, then your items should be fun. If you promote wellness and health, then your promo items should be helpful in promoting the health of the users. It has to be appropriate.
  5. Give away something fun or amusing. Fun promotional items are like excellent jokes—everyone wants to share them. So when you offer something that’s amusing and it brings smiles to people’s faces, you know for a fact that it has a winning personality. These are the items that people like to show off to their friends and colleagues, which in turn, increases the visibility of your brand.

With so many companies giving away freebies these days, it can be hard for your promotional items to stand out. Go for something that reflects the values of your brand with a bit of zest thrown in, and you’ll have promotional products with personality that will help you achieve your marketing goals.