(AI-free post)

So, my exhibiting friends, what’s it gonna be this time?

A stress ball? Some pens? USB cables maybe? What colors?

What a dilemma right?

Or maybe not.

Do you know how these goodies are called?

SWAGS.

Giveaways are called swags for a reason

Do I mean goods acquired by unlawful means?

Not really, even though you’ll see they tend to have this effect on visitors.

SWAGS stands for Stuff We All Get, meaning, basically, crappy gifts.

(yes like the $10 gift you brought for your pre-Xmas friends’ party, along with your ugly Xmas sweater).

If you followed my previous post called trade show spending is like government spending you’ll know where I’m heading.

Are these SWAGS necessary? And how to know?

An annoying question for your trade show manager.

What will people do with these wonderful presents?

How long will they keep’em? And will they help them remember your company?

Like we say in French from the 2000s, la question elle est vite répondue (the answer’s pretty obvious).

And one more question to help you, what’s the ATTITUDE of visitors when they see your presents? Do they want to snatch it and leave quickly or do they have another behavior?

You didn’t know one could spend their professional time analyzing such petty details?

I didn’t know that professionals like trade show manager could spend so much time making such bad decisions and spending.

Sorry for the slam dunk, but if you found yourself going through catalogs of goodies, for hours, to choose one to give away on your next show, you just lost your time and your company’s money.

If you want to avoid this trap, you’ll be happy to learn that there are two types of giveaways and two ways of giving them away.

That makes 4 combination and the SWAG getting SWAGGED is not one of the winning ones.

So if you’ll ever want to learn about it, I’ll be happy to have you on my next trade show training to help you master all the petty details of these encounters that can make or break your business encounters, and you’ll see that to SWAG or not to SWAG that is not the question.

The art of gifting

The difficulty lies in the qrt of gifting.

Some are more gited than others.

Like with any gift youĺl make, wether professionaly or personaly.

So here are my last two cents on the subject and a tip for you.

Avoid stuff people always get on trade shows, you want to stand out, not blend in the mass of pens and other cheap branded products everyone will get. And if you wander what else you could buy, remember, like at your last Xmas, that it all comes down to is the intention you have, the impact and the effect you want to make on the receiving hand.

PS: How about I do a video of me SWAGING these SWAGS, in these little hamlets that trade shows are, just to show you that to swag or not to swag is not the question, and that to not swag is not a tragedy?