Promotional Products as an Engagement Strategy

Promotional products are a communications tool that can engage all five senses. They are a creative way of not only informing but for interacting with an audience providing a sensory experience. Promotional products can be any tangible item usually imprinted with an organization’s message, branding or promise.
    
Unlike other advertising media which interrupt the recipient, promotional products engage an audience. They are often the beginning of a relationship. They are the one communication tactic for which people say “thank you” when they receive it.  Practitioners like to point out that promotional products are the original medium of engagement and the very beginnings of the industry indicate that it was born to engage people.

While promotional products in America can be traced back to commemorative buttons for President George Washington and there were some advertising calendars, rulers and wooden items prior to the forming of the industry, it was a printer in Coshocton, Ohio by the name of Jasper Meeks who is considered the father of the industry.  Meeks was able to convince the local shoe store to buy book bags imprinted with the store’s message and to give them out for free to the local school.  Soon, a competitor picked up on that idea and soon they were selling all kinds of items imprinted with the messages of local businesses.  

Each item imprinted with an organization’s message stimulates some basic human gratification factors. The act of giving and receiving is the basis of a relationship and engenders goodwill, trust and loyalty. The law of reciprocity comes into play, as the recipient desires to return the positive feelings to the giver. The high perceived value creates a high pass-along rate as well. The PPAI Promotional Products Awareness and Usage Study found that 88% of recipients recall the advertiser and 62% recalled the message on promotional products received in the past twelve months! * A recall level that would suggest strong affinity and appreciation for the giver.

Organizations wishing to build stronger bonds of engagement with their stakeholders often choose promotional products such as apparel, writing instruments, drinkware, bags, lifestyle products, awards; desk and business accessories, electronic devices, computer products; health, safety and wellness items, and food products.

This is an engaging tactic for:
• APPRECIATION for extra efforts, loyalty, patronage or donor support.
• RECOGNITION of outstanding achievement and for reinforcement of positive behaviors.
• MARKETING in a way that informs, influences and enables. Turning strangers into friends, friends into customers and customers into advocates.
• BRANDING to create long-term awareness, engagement and action.
• PRESENCE — extending the organization’s presence beyond a specific location, event or program on items that are carried with an implied endorsement by their recipient and that start conversations and create word-of-mouth continuity of message.
• INCENTIVE — offering lifestyle enhancing products or products that serve as a reward for acting now. The huge variety of items that excite, engage and motivate people to pay attention and perform with enthusiasm.
• TRAINING — teaching new skills, reinforcing key messages and communicating culture and values require repetition and multiple exposures to a message. Placing key learning messages on items that are kept, are used multiple times will do just that. Plus, because they engage all five of the senses, promotional products are a tool that can appeal to a variety of learning styles and audiences.

Because promotional products are tangible, physical, multi-dimensional and customizable, they can be effective for engaging an audience through all five senses.
• Sight – reinforce the colors, branding cues and appeal to the visual sense with selections that have aesthetic appeal.
• Touch – products can be textured and shaped to reinforce attributes of the communication message such as hard, soft, furry, warm, round or unique.
• Taste – food is an extremely popular category and a strong sensory cue. From custom shaped and debossed chocolate treats to custom labeled bottled water and even fruit, candies and gourmet treats — taste can deliver your communications in a way that creates positive associations with your brand.
• Sound – from the cracking of a chocolate bar, to a noise maker at a sporting event, sound chip embedded into the item, promotional products can reinforce and replay message reinforcing notes from a jingle to a president’s speech.
• Smell – the one sense that we cannot turn off but one that evokes memories. Scent is a part of food items and is something that can be added to pens, ink and post-it pads. If a unique scent is a part of the communication delivery, promotional products may have the right way to extend that messaging.
• And finally the sixth sense—ownership, gratitude and community. A sense of community occurs when different people share a common interest, cause or like-mindedness.

Promotional products are an effective communication tool because they do remain to be seen. Most recipients keep items for more than a year and many items are used daily and kept on or with the person.  Great communication should have three factors to be a strong tool of engagement and promotional products excel in all three:

* Relevance:  The message must relate to the lifestyle, needs, values or aspirations of the target audience.  Promotional products are uniquely geared to relate with strong relevance. After all, these products are sold at retail where people spend their own money to buy them. Whether it’s a beautiful writing instrument and journal book for taking notes at a conference, or a fishing lure with your message imprinted on it given to the avid anglers in your company, this communication medium is the most targeted of all. They are creatively limitless. Almost any product you can imagine may be imprinted and customized.
* Repetition:  The audience must be exposed to the message multiple times for the recipient to retain it.  Promotional products have a long life offering continuous repetition and exposure to the message.  An effective means of acquisition, promotional products are often used in public. This exposure stimulates conversations and interaction and generates highly valuable reach, frequency and impressions. Providing even more repetition of the message and the meaning behind it.
* Reward:  The message must promise to create pleasure or reduce pain, save money or increase income or in some way reward the recipient.  By their nature, this communications tactic is an item of useful value that provides a sense of reward to the recipient and in turn creates positive emotions towards the person or the brand delivering it.

For effective use, the engagement professional will be strategic and thoughtful in the selection of promotional products as a communications device.  Selecting the right products means knowing your communication objectives. It is critical to be intentional and to know what message you are going to deliver.  Be specific. Focus on helping, enabling and informing your target audience.

Know your audience. When it comes to selecting effective promotional products reverse the Golden Rule and use the Platinum Rule.  It is not a matter of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you; do unto others as THEY would have you do to them.  In other words, choose items based on their interests, their values, their lifestyles. Don’t select them based on your personal preferences or biases.  

Select items for longevity of message. Remember that it is better to spend more for an item that the recipient will interact with for years rather than an item that will be used once and forgotten.  Remember, it’s not what a product does; it’s what a product means. You are not giving away an item; you are delivering a sensory experience. Choose wisely.

Do not waste money, damage your brand or weaken your communication efforts. Follow these guidelines for maximum results.  1) Know the medium and use it to reinforce and complement your other engagement strategies. Decide on a communication objective and determine ways to reinforce the message and communicate it on a sensory level through promotional products. Use promotional products to increase participation in surveys and assessments. Encourage collaboration by creating a team atmosphere with shared and common apparel offerings, creating common colors and even branding among team members.  2) Know your audience. Make sure the items that you use in your engagement and communication strategies are appealing to them. Select items based on the demographics, lifestyles and affiliations of your audience.  3) Tell a story. Consider your options to script your experience and put an exclamation point on the total communication and relationship efforts that is being created.  4) Have clear objectives and measurements in place. Adding a promotional product to your engagement strategy mix generates positive emotions and attitudes. (ASI Impressions Study)**. 5) Give yourself sufficient lead-time. Plan your sensory experiences including promotional products at the onset. By planning ahead, the communications dollar is maximized, more creative options are available and rush charges are avoided.  6) Work with a promotional professional who understands your objectives and find quality products, will follow sound practices to insure product safety and will protect your brand.

Promotional products are easily delivered at seminars, events, in direct mail and from person to person. It is a communications tool that engages an audience through touch, taste, smell, sight and sound and creates feelings of goodwill toward the organization that delivered it to them.

It doesn’t stop there.

Those feelings recur every time the recipient uses the item. They can be the beginning of a relationship.  They extend memories of a positive organizational experience by being the commemoration of a special event.  The relationship of the promotional product to the recipient and the meaning that it represents create a value that is far and above the price. It moves into the next dimension of emotional connection infused with tangible memories, meaning, passion and an affiliation with a cause.

Research Citations and Sources:
• PPAI:  www.ppai.org/inside-ppai/research
PPAI Promotional Products Awareness and Usage Study 2012
• ASI:  www.asicentral.com/asp/open/Research
ASI Impressions Study