For most consumers, the first impression they experience with your brand is the one that sticks with them moving forward. It doesn’t matter if that impression comes from online content, traditional forms of advertising or marketing or in person, the first impression is critical. When using promotional products to create a brand-to-consumer connection it is highly important to ask yourself one question; do your promotional products have personality?
If your company values fun and excitement, then so should your promotional products. The branded merchandise and promotional products that your brand chooses to use for branding and marketing your products and services should loudly represent your “brand voice.” This begs the question, what is a brand voice? Technically a “brand voice” as defined by Larsen.com is “Brand voice is the purposeful, consistent expression of a brand through words and prose styles that engage and motivate.” Using promotional products is another impactful strategies to communicate with your audience.
In order to create promotional products that highlight your brand voice and have a personality there are three questions that need to be answered and evaluated:
What is the overall objective of giving out promotional products for this campaign?
Who is your target audience that you hope to connect with using promotional products?
Can we create something that hasn’t been done in the past?
Each of these questions are mission critical if your brand wants to see a real ROI from using promotional products to connect with and effectively establish a solid first impression with consumers. Below are examples of promotional products that scream personality from the brands that created them. When looking at these examples you will clearly be able to see that each of the three questions listed above were answered. Her we go:
Here is one from Jeep. This brand has always been known as an Adventures and outdoors kind of vehicle. They chose to create a promotional carabineer to promote their automobile. This product is a direct reflection of who they are and who their target audience truly is.
Next is one from Twitter. In order to use twitter your devices must have power. Twitter created small and discrete USB Wall Chargers. They had them created in their brands colors, bright and loud. By creating a promotional product that adds value and is useful for their audience, Twitter hit a home run with this wall charger.
Next is a promotional product from Nivea that was probably not designed to be sold or given out to consumers but it sure does have personality. In order to create awareness about a new product that helps diminish cellulite, they created a perfectly designed promotional couch that was a perfect visual marketing tool.
The last one is a bunch of promotional products from Marketing Fuel. Just by looking at this image you can get a real sense of the kind of personality that they have. Fun, clever, useful and innovative promotional products that visually exemplify their brand.
Ask yourself again, do your promotional product have a personality? If not now is the time to change that. Be creative. Be innovative. Showoff your brands personality and voice!