Ball State

» promotional items

By China at 8:46 AM

I tripped over a couple shoes, some empty shopping bags, and a bag filled with junk as I stepped through the apartment door the other day. Rolling my eyes, I kicked some of the debris off the floor and neatly placed my shoes on the rack along the wall just the way that I wish my other roommates would do instead of nearly killing me with the stuff they scatter in front of the door. But I dont want to talk about pet peeves with roommates. I appreciate them very much, and Im sure they put up with a lot more with me than I do with them.

Anyways, after placing my shoes on the rack, I started to move the bag of junk aside when I peeked inside and noticed it was full of some interesting stuff bags, visors, mugs, bottles, key chains, and all the pens you could imagine. It was full of promotional items. My roommate must have gotten it from the latest career fair he attended at the local convention center. This bag of junk may have been more valuable than I thought!

I love promotional items. First, theyre items, and usually very useful ones at that. Second, theyre promotional (i.e. free), so that makes the useful items even more desirable. Ironically, I tend to use the promotional items even more than I do some items that Ive bought from the store. Sure, the promotional items have logos and messages on them, some less discrete than others, but the item is still useful.

From an advertising point of view, I would say that promotional items are way more effective than your standard 30-second commercial or freeway billboard. Promotional items literally stay with your target consumer inside their home day in and day out in the form of a handy item that usually brings good feelings to the person who uses it. Who knows how many promotional items I have in my apartment mugs, flash drives, hats, t-shirts (which, by the way, make really great nighttime shirts), and key chains. And as I wrote earlier, apparently my roommate really likes promotional items as well.

Now I wonder what kind of promotional items would be the best. Traditionally they were stuff like key chains and pens and mugs, but some even do cool things like mints or stuffed animals or even bottled water. I guess only time will tell which would be the best.