Promotional Merchandise - What Works Better, Diversity Vs. Conformity ?

Promotional merchandise can be a hard part of promotional advertising. Selecting the right products can be daunting as there is no perfect piece of merchandise. It is important to do your research and suit your products to your recipients.

There are many influencing factors that go into the promotional merchandise selection to pick the best product for the company and it can be quite a strenuous procedure. But still people seem to choose printed t-shirts, printed mugs and promotional pens?

The truth is many companies are scared to take the risk, especially with their marketing strategies. This is for two reasons, the first reason is although promotional items are considered as a cheap method of advertising, at the end of the day you're still making a substantial purchase of bulk order of promotional items, and therefore not many companies are willing to gamble this money away.

The second reason is people are inherently apprehensive about changing from the norm, unless they as a last resort have to. Which is most probably where the saying "If it's not broken don't fix it" derived from. Promotional merchandise has always predominately been these small relatively low-cost everyday items and many companies have chosen to stick by this strategy, because at the end of the day, it does what they want it to do, which is advertise their company through promotional merchandise.

After all these negatives, diverse promotional merchandise does have its benefits. The first bonus is that you stand out from the crowd, rather than simply being identified for your logo, you are identified by an actual product. A great example would be the Telephone company, O2's rubber duck campaign. At this time, O2 decided to use rubber ducks for their promotional merchandise, which isn't a popular choice. This worked to their advantage because not only would people associate O2 branded rubber ducks with their company, but they would also associate normal rubber ducks also. If you are able to pull this off, not only are you creating a marketing strategy around this promotional item, you will also be creating a, sort of, sub-brand.

Although many people use promotional merchandise in different ways, and for different reasons, and in different contexts, promotional items exists for one reason and one reason only, that is to spread the word of your company. This is why companies are scared to go the diverse route. Thinking logically if you attend an electrical trade show the last thing you expect to be handed is a rubber duck? What would you do with this non-functional, and unless this item had a meaning, it would most probably end up in the trash straight away. The most disruptive risk for a promotional merchandise campaign, is to distribute a worthless piece of merchandise. The least efficient method of advertising is an unwanted piece of promotional merchandise


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BTC Group was founded by Francis Murphy & Peter Beirne in 1977. They have a production facility near London Heathrow airport that is the envy of the Promotional Products industry. To see how they brand more than 1 Million Promotional Items and Promotional Clothing watch the video in the About Us section of the BTC Group website