Do you ever wonder if that logo product that was distributed at the recruiting fair kept your company front of mind, or did your brand message fade as soon as the lights went out?  According to the 2012 global study on the effectiveness of promotional products conducted by the Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI), owners of branded promotional merchandise remember the advertiser 87% of the time, with outerwear being the item with the highest advertiser recognition at 97%.  And when it comes to the question of how recipients really feel about the advertiser, an average of 52% feel more favorable after receiving a branded item, with outerwear once again leading the charge with a 73% approval rating.

This data shouldn’t surprise us considering how we all feel about receiving free “stuff”, but amid the growing sensitivity to what impact waste has on our environment, many corporate givers have begun to consider the fate of these promotional products.  To help ease those fears, the study results show that if a recipient gets something they don’t want to keep, 66% of them give it to someone else, 18% put it away and forget about it, and only 16% throw it away.  This is good news for the advertiser since the impression from the re-gifted item goes beyond the targeted customer, and also for those concerned that our merchandise not go immediately to the landfill.  Of course, this also gives us all good reason to consider the usefulness of an item when looking at promotional product options.  (does anyone really keep those foam fingers?)

The study rounds out the question of the effect of promotional merchandise by asking if the recipient was persuaded to buy from the advertiser after receiving the gift.  According to the study, when consumers were asked how likely they were to do business with an advertiser they hadn’t previously done business with after receiving an item, about 31 percent said they were more likely to do business with them in the future.  With nearly 1/3 of the recipients likely to support the corporate giver after receiving a branded item, it’s not hard to understand why that tool remains an important part of the overall marketing initiative.

Next week Part III will summarize the study’s findings on number of impressions and cost effectiveness of promotional merchandise.  Stay tuned!