As an active business student I go to events that have booths all the time. In fact, this morning I went to a career fair. It’s always interesting to see what booths are at these types of events – even more interesting is the types of swag that they offer. I feel that they use swag to lure students to their booths. Swag is the first point of marketing contact and could make the difference between any student going to a booth they’ve never heard of.
Companies that pride themselves on sustainability have standard prizes. Every business student has some kind of :
– reusable bag with the company logo to discourage use of plastic bags
– pens (that might be made out of recyclable/compostable materials)
– Notebooks made from recycled paper
– Water bottles with the company logo on it to discourage consumption of plastic water bottles
It’s interesting that all of these companies are almost lacking innovation in this area. It’s the first point of contact with students, and yet even a simple thing such as swag has been standardized and can’t really be differentiated.
However, I found the anomaly today at a career fair. I walked up to a booth where one of the representatives of the company presented me with a small package, “We don’t believe in swag, because it’s just more consumption. Instead, here is one dollar. You can keep the dollar or write your name and number on the back to have it put into a pool of money where half the money will go to charity and the other half will go to a random draw of someone who donated to this pool of money with the dollar.”
I was so impressed. I was hooked. Screw swag – this was the way to go to show your values. My bag was already filled with too much stuff from other companies. They differentiated themselves in a way that I could appreciate. Needless to say – I will be contacting Traction on Demand because I know they have a culture I can respect. (Plus they get free marketing from this blog post from an impressed student who loves social sustainability.)
I sincerely hope companies can follow suite in something similar that provides as much value and as much of an impression as this company.
Super interesting Veronica! I think it’s super neat how that company took a different approach to swag. As a marketing student, I see swag as an opportunity for companies to get their brands out in the hands (literally) of their potential consumers. Compared to the $1 approach, swag is pretty superficial. By taking the time to explain what the company does with their $1 instead of buying cheap sunglasses resonates with you so much more. It really shows what the company values, and the types of relationships they like to build with the customers and employees. I think that would be a great social marketing strategy, and pretty grassroots with a component of CSR as well. It would be cool if I can implement this in one of my future careers too.
This is definitely an interesting concept. I’ve always seen swag as garbage 90% of the time. Most items are completely useless and even if they are it’s usually cheap and breaks not soon after. Old time marketing of bombarding the masses with their logo isn’t effective anymore in an age where everybody is a skeptic. It is both economical for their company and generates priceless goodwill, while making an offhand insult to those companies offering swag that is equivalent to a dollar. It may also be a great way to generate money for donations as individuals don’t want to seem cheap or selfish. It would be interesting if they are using this promotion to also evaluate the characters of potential hires.