Vendors: I appreciate The Thought, But Please Stop Sending Frisbees And Polo Shirts

I don't want to sound ungrateful and I do appreciate vendors thinking of me, but I'd prefer to see vendors save their money and not send me logo encrusted frisbees, beach balls, mugs, calendars, polo shirts and the like. This swag costs vendors a lot of money to get made and in most cases, it's also arriving to me via FedEx which is costing you another twenty or thirty dollars for delivery.

What I always recommend to any vendor who wants to get in front of the media and leave them with something that keeps their brand in mind is to use flash drives. They are cheap to buy and you can drop them in an envelope and mail them out for less than a dollar. And even better, pre-load it with all of your marketing materials, product sheets, press releases and any other company related content and it's even more valuable. I'll actually use it and will look at the contents on the drive.

I'd feel bad if I were to throw out all the shirts I get, being some of them are very nice and some even come custom with my name already on them. But at 185 pounds, anything sized XL looks like a dress on me. So the shirts end up going in one of those clothing donation bins.

Again, I appreciate the thought, but I think the money could be spent more wisely.

Comments

[Tim Siglin]

Good point, Dan, although my children would disagree with you on the frisbees.

The flash drives that are handed out at trade show press rooms are definitely keepers, much more so than the stack of press CDs one has to go through and copy the contents to a hard drive.

You forgot to add the flash drives should be at least 4GB in size :)

[Steve Lerner]

We only send wine, Mezcal, and Zabars food baskets... We'll make sure you don't get any.

[Philip Nelson]

Dan,

Dang... I has a special box ready for you that had NewTek TriCaster frisbie, coffee mug, polo shirt and an Iron Man Bobblehead.. ;)

Seriously.. Good post. It's amazing how much money is spent on crap..

See Ya,
Philip

[Stupid PR]

what are these PR bone heads doing? for a 5K t-shirt, can can hire another engineer for a few months and get the product out sooner. marketing is about strategy and product development, not stupid gifts.