Youngest Sister's Swag Emporium

I don't know about you, but I have never heard anyone call a woman a "tchotchke."

In an earlier post, I told you about my friend Russ who threw caution to the wind, daring would-be customers to approach his booth without so much as the offer of a pen or a piece of candy. Is Russ a harbinger of a new world order in trade show marketing? Hell no. Trade show swag is alive and well, as evidenced by the number of pre-inscribed demo trinkets I get in my mailbox all year long. But forget about the pens. Pens are so yesterday. Useful, but yesterday. Tradeshow attendees want more than pens! So I went trolling for swag and prepared this review of the hottest giveaways in the tradeshow world today, from the fun to the functional.

NEW THIS YEAR! COLORING BOOKS!

The people at medisolv (all lower-case, no e at the end) handed out adult coloring books. And by "adult" I don't mean an off-color naughty coloring book like the one my friend Sara has on the coffee table in her living room. I mean a coloring book with designs that are meant to be colored by adults. And, as you learned in my Tradeshow Entertainment post, medisolv also had a coloring wall in their booth. I think the only thing they could have done better would have been to give away crayons or markers to go with the coloring book, instead of the little lion keychain shown in the picture. I can only assume the lion keychain was left over from a previous tradeshow so I sure don't blame them for trying to unload the old stuff. We all do that. At my booth we are still giving away notebooks from 2012. At least notebooks don't go bad, although we have changed our logo since then, so they are a little bit out of date. Coloring, on the other hand, will never go out of style.

My company's out of date yet functional notebook.

THE FUNCTIONAL

I really love the insulated grocery bag that our friends at Iatric Systems gave away. I used it last night to tote groceries over to Sara's house where we experimented with cooking fish and vegetables in their new smoker, but forgot to get out her coloring books. I think those coloring books are a good distraction to keep adults from drinking too much and I want to remember that next time. The fish was fantastic but the asparagus got so shriveled up it was almost unrecognizable. I reckon I cooked it about twice as long as I should have. At any rate, this grocery bag is swell because it is has a thermal lining and a zipper. It looks like it must have cost a lot which I interpret as proof that Iatric Systems is doing very well indeed.

THE FUN AND FUNCTIONAL

The moment I saw this thermal wine glass I knew I HAD to have one, so I marched myself straight over to the IMO booth where they were being given away. Only it turns out this was "qualified swag" and apparently I didn't qualify. The man looked straight at my badge, which gave me away as a vendor, not a customer, and sneered, "Thees ees for customer only." (He had an accent but I couldn't figure out what kind.) My lower lip started to quiver as I took out my incredibly cute business card that identifies me as the Youngest Sister blogger and I started to explain that I was going to blog about swag. The marketing guy in the booth either thought it would be good PR for me to blog about their swag or was afraid I was about to cry, so he handed me one and I was grateful. Again, it looks pretty darned expensive, so you sure can't blame them for not wanting to give one of these treasures to a lowly vendor. But IMO, which stands for "Intelligent Medical Objects," not "In My Opinion," has recently gotten some big new investors so I'm thinking they can afford it. IMO (which, in this case, stands for "In my opinion") the guy who blew me off has never seen Pretty Woman, because anyone who has seen Pretty Woman knows you never know who might turn out to be your next big customer. Who can forget the scene where Julia Roberts returns to the sales woman who had blown her off earlier? "Big mistake," she says. "Huge." I love that scene.

THE PENS

I know I just said that pens, as tradeshow giveaways, are so yesterday, but there were a few that were interesting enough to be noteworthy. NTT Data was the sponsor of the party where I met the cowboy who let me sing Patsy Cline with him, so I went over to their booth to say thank you. It is polite to thank your host when you attend a party, I don't care if it is a tradeshow. I thought it was especially nice that they let me drink their wine even though I'm not a customer. Anyway, when I went to the booth to say thank you, they also gave me one of their cute pens. How nice is that? They were a class act, IMO. And that stands for in my opinion and certainly not Intelligent Medical Objects.

The pens that apparently no one actually writes with.

DrFirst, who are the same people who had the money blowing booth you read about in my Tradeshow Entertainment post, had colorful tchotchkes that caught my eye so I stopped there and gave them one of my adorable Youngest Sister blogger business cards in exchange for a pair of medical people pens. At first glance it wasn't even clear what they were, because they have these heavy weighted bottoms and I thought there might be more to it than just a pen so I said, "And what does this do?" The lady who had handed them to me said, "It's a pen," and her delivery was just so yankee bitch deadpan it was hysterical. It was Friday and she had probably had to tell 200 people that the thing was just a bloody pen. And besides, I wasn't even a customer. So I just said you go girl and kept moving.

THE DELL SURVIVAL KIT

The guys over at the Dell booth not only gave me one of each of their tchotchkes, they gave me a little bag to carry them in. They had given me a pen and the ever-popular hand sanitizer when one of them piped up, "Where are the knives?" I really couldn't believe I had heard correctly. "You are giving away knives at a tradeshow?" I asked, to confirm. "Yep," they said. "Box cutters." Obviously I had to stick around for this. Turns out that the feature that makes it possible for them to give away a box cutter at a tradeshow is that the blade doesn't lock open. And it is also very, very small. Even if some crazy PMS-ing attendee went postal and tried to start slashing people, it wouldn't cause much damage. So I reckon it is okay after all, even though it's a bit of an unconventional choice, as tradeshow swag goes.

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

I spent the next 30 minutes at the T System booth where I met Belinda and Molly. They explained that T-System is the Cadillac of Emergency Department Management systems and I said that's such a coincidence because OnCall Learning Systems is the Cadillac of clinical software eLearning. So you see, we had a lot in common right from the get-go. They apologized that all they had to give in exchange for my incredibly cute business cards (which they really did think were incredibly cute) were these two pen-like things (pictured at right) and said, "You should have seen the back scratchers." They had back scratchers and I missed them. Belinda and Molly said those back scratchers were so popular they just flew out of the booth and I don't doubt that one bit because they said it was a retractable back scratcher. Of all the rotten luck. They were politely looking at my business card and asking about the blog and about how many sisters I had and it turns out that Molly is one of twelve children. She is #8 of 12 so, of course, I wanted to know all about that. What kind of people have twelve children? I asked. Molly described her parents as a couple of laid-back hippies who were, obviously, pretty into each other. She said each older kid was assigned a younger kid to look after and that her "big" was an older sister. She said for years she only knew that this one was her sister and had no idea who all those other kids were. Molly's stories would surely put mine to shame so she should probably reserve the URL www.eighthoftwelve.com and get into this lucrative blogging business.

Multi-function flashlight/laser pointer (L) and highlighter (R).

This is Molly. Can't you just tell she doesn't take shit from anybody?

HARD TO CLASSIFY

Parallon Technology Solutions had some tchotchke outliers that caught my eye. First was the world's smallest hot or cold pack that came in orange or blue. If punctured, do not swallow beads. You microwave it for hot or freeze it for cold but the injury had better be small because this hot pack is only 3" x 5". They also had a rubber pocket thingie that has adhesive on the back and you are meant to stick it to your cell phone to hold cards. Only I wouldn't put my room key card in there because some people will tell you that your cell phone can make your room key inoperable. This has happened to me enough times that I am careful not to do it, in spite of the fact that it is apparently an urban legend. Just between you and me, I think attaching this rubber card pocket to the back of your cell phone would be a little bit like wearing a pocket protector and I'm not sure it would be a very good look.

Microwave for hot, freeze for cold. If punctured, do not swallow beads.

Stick this to the back of your cell phone for a very hip look.

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StoriesMary Welby von ThelenJune 6, 2017trade show, tchotchkes, swag, Post, postComment