Promotional merchandise

Promotional merchandise are products branded with a logo or slogan and distributed at little or no cost to promote a brand, corporate identity, or event. Such products, which are often informally called promo products, swag (mass nouns), or freebies (count nouns), are used in marketing and sales. Often they are of the tchotchke type. They are given away or sold at a loss to promote a company, corporate image, brand, or event. They are often distributed as handouts at trade shows, at conferences, on sales calls (that is, visits to companies that are purchasing or might purchase), and as bonus items in shipped orders. They are often used in guerrilla marketing campaigns. Ones for video games are often called feelies.

The first known promotional products in the United States were commemorative buttons dating back to the election of George Washington in 1789. During the early 19th century, there were some advertising calendars, rulers, and wooden specialties, but there was no organized industry for the creation and distribution of promotional items until later in the 19th century.

Jasper Meek, 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 Coshocton printer and a competitor of Meek, picked up on the idea, and soon the two men were selling and printing marble bags, 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 10,000 global members. PPAI represents the promotional products industry of more than 22,000 distributors and approximately 4,800 manufacturers.

The UK and Ireland promotional merchandise industry formally emerged as corporate marketing became more sophisticated during the late 1950s. Before this, companies may have provided occasional gifts, but there was no recognised promotional merchandise industry. The real explosion in the growth of the promotional merchandise industry took place in the 1970s. At this time an ever-increasing number of corporate companies recognised the benefits gained from promoting their corporate identity, brand or product, with the use of gifts featuring their own logo. In the early years, the range of products available was limited.

Giorgio Armani is credited as being the first fashion brand designer who offered clothes to celebrated people and public figures. This did not prevent the brand from promoting Armani suits in poplar movies and so mainstream designer clothing among a broad consumer base. In the early 1980s demand grew from distributors for a generic promotional product catalogue they could brand as their own and then leave with to their corporate customers. In later years, these catalogues could be over-branded to reflect a distributor's corporate image. Distributors could then give them to their end user customers as their own. In the early years, promotional merchandise catalogues were very much sales tools and customers would buy the products offered on the pages.

In the 1990s, new catalogue services emerged for distributors from various sources. The nineties also saw the emergence of ‘catalogue groups’ - groups that offered a unique catalogue to a limited geographical group of promotional merchandise distributor companies. Membership in a Catalogue Group could also offer improved buying terms, a network of fellow distributor companies, and provide other support services. Examples of catalogue groups include Trade Only Spectrum Catalogue, Page Group and the Envoy Group, offering discounted products to a select group of distributors who have all been in the industry for over three years. Members of the Envoy Group have regional exclusivity as one of their perks providing some protection to the low entry barrier of the market

Before the 1990s, the industry had a peak season in which the majority of promotional products were sold. The season featured around Christmas and the giving of gifts. This changed significantly in the early 1990s as Christmas gifts became less appropriate in a multicultural society. 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 and events. In the early 21st century 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 customer 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.