I was in a meeting this week when someone asked if promotional gifts at exhibitions we're just a waste of money. The debate started, there where 6 people around the table and 3 people on the video conference system. Someone referred to giveaways, someone else to gifts, such as an iPod, that could be used to get people to fill in a form. Then someone started to recall the little fluffy lions that a particular sales manager always wanted and how they never attracted the right people onto the stand - people who were going to be purchasing the equipment that he was selling. I let the discussion run for a little while before I said, "I think I'd better give some input to this discussion". What I had witnessed was quite normal in respect of promotional gifts - people were focused on the gift, not what their objective was or how they were going to use them.

So I started by saying that promotional gifts were useful as long as it was understood why they were being used, what the objective was and how to use them. In order to balance the discussion I did start by telling the story of an exhibition that I was in two weeks ago in China where I watched someone sneak 4 of pens off of the exhibition counter whilst he engaged a sales executive in conversation. In this case these pens were not likely to achieve anything at all. Promotional gifts such as pens can have an effect but only if they are given very deliberately to someone as a gift not a giveaway accompanied by a statement such as "each time you use this pen I would like you to remember the conversation that we've just had". This makes the pen a memory trigger not a giveaway plastic pen.

I went on to explain the benefit derived from the giver who particularly liked the fluffy lions or the relationship warmth that could be achieved by having promotional gifts to give that were not available to everyone but just for selected people but perhaps that's best left for another read.

The conclusion is that promotional gifts are very useful and effective when you have a clear objective and use them in the right way.