Swag, short for “Stuff We All Get” is most often heard about when celebrities attend award events and a-list parties such as P. Diddy’s annual “White Party” that I will talk about later in this post. Swag is a great avenue for advertising and promotional products defiantly fall into the “Stuff We All Get” category.
As a small business owner the swag we use can not be compared to the famous Oscar swag bags given to celebrities on award night. Presenters at the 2006 Oscar Awards were sent home with swag bags worth a whopping $100,000. iPods, trips to Hawaii and Digital Cameras were just a few of the items spilling out of the celebrity goody bags. The IRS decided that the swag bags handed out at the Oscars were not really gifts, they were considered a form of advertising and the Academy discontinued them after 2006.
A give-a-way or promotional item given to a customer usually is nothing more than a custom imprinted pen or beer koozies, were as most celebrity swag bags are the actual product such as an iPod or a high end pair of sunglasses. Companies such as Apple are hoping that one of the celebrities will be seen on TV or in a magazine jamming to their iPod boosting the brand with tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of free advertising not to mention a plug from a popular personality using their product.
P. Diddy is one of the most successful marketers of this era. P. Diddy has not has a chart toping hit song in years, yet he manages to stay in the press and on top of the a-list. One of the key strategies of his successful run is throwing his annual “White Party”. P. Diddy invites his a-list celebrity friends to wear white (Labor Day Weekend) and swag is always a part of Diddy’s big bash. The press flocks to the event and highlight the swag that is given out.
Chances are us little guy’s can not give-a-way our products, but we can use Promotional Products as swag and have the same success as the fortune 500 companies do with the celebrity swag bags. Custom Imprinted Promotional Products will generate new customers and keep current customers coming back.
Tim Somers
Bizarre Promotions, Inc.
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Jason Rakowski
Hi Jason,
Thank you for the kind words! Your customer service blog is also has a great wealth of info. If you are interested in guest blogging let me know – Tim
Great post. I really enjoyed it. I will have to bookmark this site for later.