Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

Dear mannthar,

The booty you've mentioned is what many expo attendees refer to
as junk. As cute as most of these things are, 95 percent of them get trashed within a week, and many more get trashed before the person toting them has left the expo.

With an event like the one you're talking about you need to look at spending serious money on serious keepers (not a few cents on crap people are going to throw away).

Here's a supplier of high end giveaways:

[inactive link removed]

The perceived value of the items you offer has to be high, which means the cost to you, per item will also be high. You cannot do high perceived value on the cheap because if you do, YOU look cheap and your intent backfires.

I hope this helps. Good luck to you.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA



[Moderator: Inactive link removed from post. 2/17/2011]

What's your goal for your exhibition? Are you trying to increase awareness of the university itself, a department in the university, increase enrollment, attract new faculty, or something else entirely?

The gifts that you give should relate to your larger goal. Also, you might want to consider trading contact information (email address & name) in exchange for a gift to continue communicating with the attendees post-event.

If you want to create a wow - have a contest where you give away a year's education, a semester's education, and/or a single class to the lucky entrants.

Motherboards and Circuitboards made into clipboard and cards are very unique..not connected to them in anyway..
https://images.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=https://www.eco-artware.com/catalog/...

Hi,

Well as you have defined the target audeince really well a perfect give would be "MP4" Player. Stuedents will definately retain it, as it is the in thing with these folks!!!!

MP4 Player needs to be preloaded with:

1. University Demo Video
2. Testimonials of Ex-Student who have joined in the Top companies
3. A detailed Line Up of the courses.

Swap,
Dubai, UAE.

Hi, mannthar

As my brothers in marketing arms have already noted, items you mentioned will not make you remembered.

Brochures are not only dull, but also not green. Pens are usually cheaply made, even if they are not very cheap, they usually have logos on them, which make them very fishy, unless they look like a collectible item. Bags are OK, but it's hard to answer everyone's taste, most likely 80% of the bags will not be used. Plastic Bags, memo's, Caps - are all worthless. Key chains are for kids, car sunshades, shields, printed t-shirts- will go to trash.

USB memory cards are good, in fact, it's a good idea, but only if the capacity is bigger than 32Gb. That makes this gift very expensive. Perhaps, not realistic.

You will have to come up with something valuable, something that will stay with the person. This will either have to be an item that every single person will use or will be proud to give someone else as a gift. The item will have to be made of great material and last very long.

It's very important to know who is your target audience. For instance, if those are students, I think that they would love to have great leather organizer with a beautiful engraving of the University name or emblem. This could be a very good quality wooden photo frame for the graduation photo.

One of the ideas - to make a deal with some store or provider for a big discount. Like, for instance, you can give them 50% discount on Apple or Dell products. Or give them 10 FREE mp3 downloads from Amazon or Itunes Store.

Those are just some suggestions. You have to analyze your target audience to come up with the perfect solution. But let the gift be something people will be very happy to have, carry for a long time and proud to show off. Imagine, would you give this gift to 5 most important people in your live for a very big occasion? If the answer is "no way" - pick something else.

Whatever happens -
Good Luck!
Natasha Chernyavskaya
Artographica
Los Angeles, CA