Promotional item

Template:Globalize/US Promotional items or promotional products refers to articles of merchandise that are used in marketing and communication programs. These items are usually imprinted with a company's name, logo or slogan, and given away at trade shows, conferences, and as part of guerrilla marketing campaigns.

Products and uses

Almost anything can be branded with a company’s name or logo and used for promotion. Common items include t-shirts, caps, keychains, posters, bumper stickers, pens, mugs, or mouse pads. The largest product category for promotional products is wearable items, which make up more than 30% of the total.

Most promotional items are relatively small and inexpensive, but can range to higher-end items; for example celebrities at film festivals and award shows are often given expensive promotional items such as expensive perfumes, leather goods, and electronics items. Companies that provide expensive gifts for celebrity attendees often ask that the celebrities allow a photo to be taken of them with the gift item, which can be used by the company for promotional purposes. Other companies provide luxury gifts such as handbags or scarves to celebrity attendees in the hopes that the celebrities will wear these items in public, thus garnering publicity for the company's brand name and product.

Brand awareness is the most common use for promotional items at 12.59%. Other objectives that marketers use promotional items to facilitate include employee relations and events, tradeshow traffic-building, public relations, new customer generation, dealer and distributor programs, new product introductions, employee service awards, not-for-profit programs, internal incentive programs, safety education, customer referrals, and marketing research.

Promotional items are also used in politics to promote candidates and causes. Promotional items as a tool for non-commercial organizations, such as schools and charities are often used as a part of fund raising and awareness-raising campaigns. A prominent example was the livestrong wristband, used to promote cancer awareness and raise funds to support cancer survivorship programs and research.

Collecting certain types of promotional items is also a popular hobby.

History in the US

The first known promotional products in the United States are commemorative buttons dating back to the election of George Washington in 1789. During the early 1800s, there were some advertising calendars, rulers, and wooden specialties, but there wasn’t an organized industry for the creation and distribution of promotional items until later in the 19th century.

Jasper Meeks, a printer in Coshocton, Ohio, is considered by many to be the originator of the industry when he convinced a local shoe store to supply book bags imprinted with the store name to local schools. Henry Beach, another Coshochton printer and a competitor of Meeks, picked up on the idea, and soon the two men were selling and printing bags for marbles, buggy whips, card cases, fans, calendars, cloth caps, aprons, and even hats for horses.

In 1904, 12 manufacturers of promotional items got together to found the first trade association for the industry. That organization is now known as the Promotional Products Association International or PPAI, which currently has more than 7,500 global members. PPAI represents the promotional products industry of more than 22,000 distributors and approximately 4,800 manufacturers.

Promotional products industry in the US

At one time, the use of promotional products was limited to random give-aways and not as a part of an integrated marketing effort. Today, many more promotional products are distributed by businesses and organizations, sometimes with the assistance of a promotional consultant, to specific target markets to generate specific and measurable results.

Businesses and organizations that use promotional products to achieve a particular goal should determine their intended rate of return (ROR). To maximize investment in a promotional campaign, promotional experts recommend following six steps: (1) Define a promotional objective (2) Identify a target audience (3) Determine the method of product distribution (4) Create (or continue) a theme (5) Develop a message, design, or logo for imprinting (6) Choose the correct promotional product

2008 US sales of promotional products totaled $18.1 billion dollars, down from $19.4 billion in 2007. For a historical look at sales of the promotional products industry visit the PPAI website at www.ppai.org.

The industry is made up of supplier companies who manufacture or import the products, inventory them and decorate them on demand. There are approximately 4,500 supplier companies and 22,330 distributors in the United States. Distributors buy from the supplier companies and sell them to the marketers who are termed "end buyers." The industry is made up of many small and entrepreneurial individuals and companies with 96.3% of distributor companies selling less than $2.5 million per year.

New customers who receive promotional products, on average, return sooner and more frequently, and spend more money than new customers who receive coupons. In two separate studies, SMU researchers tested whether promotional products would outperform coupons in the area of repeat business and sales. Promotional product recipients spent 27% more than coupon recipients and 139% more than welcome letter recipients over an 8-month period. Promotional product recipients were also 49% more likely than coupon recipients and 75% more likely than letter recipients to return and patronize the business in each of the eight months studied.

Promotional products industry in the UK since 1990

Up until the 1990’s the industry had a peak season in which the majority of promotional products were sold. The season featured around Christmas & the giving of gifts. This changed significantly in the early 1990’s as Christmas gifts became less appropriate in a multicultural Britain. Corporate companies were also becoming more inventive in their marketing and were now using promotional merchandise throughout the year to support the promotion of brands, products & events. In the early 2000’s the role of a promotional merchandise catalogue started to change, as it could no longer fully represent the vast range of products in the market place. By 2007 catalogues were being mailed to targeted customers lists, rather than the blanket postal mailings that had taken place before. The catalogue had now become seen more as a ‘business card’ demonstrating the concept of what a company did, rather than a critical sales tool. In 2009 published results from research involving a representative group of distributor companies, which indicated the usage of hard copy catalogues was expected to fall up to 25% in 2010.

Distributor companies are experts in sourcing creative promotional products. Traditionally, to ensure that they had an effective manufacturer network, they kept themselves aware of the trade product ranges available by attending exhibitions across the world & from mailings received from manufacturers themselves. In 2004 the way the trade sourced promotional products began to change with the launch an online trade sourcing service which united distributors with manufacturers worldwide. This service is purely for vetted trade promotional merchandise distributor companies & is not available to corporate end user companies.

By 2008 almost every distributor had a website demonstrating a range of available promotional products. Very few offer the ability to order products online mainly due to the complexities surrounding the processes to brand the promotional products required.