Understanding the rise of Event Swag Culture

EE News Desk Jan 03, 2020

What attracts you the most when it comes to attending events? Is it the entry service, where you get a nice vintage car ride or the photobooths giving you a corner for some personal selfie space or is it the end part where you get free gifts! We often see marketers giving low to medium range event swags at their respective booths such as pens, diaries, nail paints, magnets, drones, lightsabers and more. There’s so much of excitement in search of these swags which fits into our level of satisfaction.

Some of the points that event marketers need to keep in mind are:

Choice of Swag

The marketers need to understand that the free gifts excitement doesn’t last more than 3-4 days as whatever swag is been given to the audience will have the respective company logo, therefore the companies need to choose something out of the office and here came the new swag strategy, FOOD. The common human tendency of getting free food is something which could easily be targeted upon and can create great brand awareness.

Understanding the Connectivity Swag

Any trade shows, conferences or events need to have an interesting swag for the attendees at the registration desk but it should have some related connectivity with the brand's culture. This is the most concerned part of swag because the swag should depict the personality of the brand, therefore helping in choosing the right choice of swags as well. Imagine an automobile company giving away a pair of socks as a form of goodies or a clothing brand giving emoticon badges makes no connectivity. A brand needs to serve the public keeping in mind the brand’s personality and culture.

Swag longevity

Since we already know the swag presence last not more than 3-4 days or maximum a week, consequently marketers need to work off hard to make their swags have a great amount of longevity and giving their brand more recognizing value. Here the marketers need to think out of the box and have reusable gifts and this makes the swags life longer.

Tailor Swag to Your Audience

A swag will serve to its best when it’s tailor-made according to the attendees. Think about the likes and dislikes of the target audience and this will make your swag go as per the taste of the audience. This is again a difficult process but it needs to be done in favour of brands recall value.

Make it Contemporaneous

Swags when needs to be of good quality and audience choice then comes a point where it also needs to be of the current trend. Our swags should be of the on-going trend and season. For this, the marketers should search on Instagram which is one of the best trendsetter platforms amongst all and provides us with relevant information as per the target attendees too.

So, the first impression plays the most important part of any event for the brands to engage and sell. Also, the swag is one of those impressions which act as a word of mouth amongst the audience and give a topic to talk upon. On that account, think wisely, give a little extra thought while choosing your swag strategy.

(The article is contributed by Charvi Malhotra, Apeejay Institute of Mass Communication)