PROMOTIONAL PENS

Almost anything you can think of can be branded with a company’s logo or name and used for promotions. Frequent items are t-shirts, caps, keychains, pens, bumper stickers, mugs or computer mouse pads. The main product group for promotional items is wearable items, which make up more than 30% of the total.

The majority promotional products are comparatively small and reasonably priced, but can vary to higher-end items; for instance celebrities at film festivals and award shows are often given expensive promotional items such as costly perfumes, leather goods, and electronics items. Companies that provide luxurious gifts for celebrity attendees often ask that the celebrities permit a photograph to be taken of them with the promo item, which can be used by the company for a promo purpose. Other companies give luxury gifts such as handbags or scarves to celebrity attendees hoping that the celebrities will wear the products in public, thus garnering advertising for the company's brand name and items.

Industry gifts used to promote customer goodwill and preservation are the most widespread use for promotional products at 18.5%. Other objectives that brand marketing uses for promotional items to facilitate include tradeshow traffic-building, brand consciousness, PR, employee relations and events, dealer and distributor programs, new customer generation, non-profit organizations, employee service awards, new product introductions, internal incentive programs, safety education, customer referrals and research for marketing.

Promotional products are also used politically to support candidates and causes. Promotional items as an instrument for non-commercial organizations, such as charities and schools are frequently used as a component of fund raising and awareness-raising campaigns. A famous example was the livestrong wristband, used to promote cancer awareness and raise capital to support cancer survivorship programs and study.

Collecting some types of promotional products is also popular.