There’s a statement. Why should a cheaply produced, sometimes leaky, sometimes gaudy, mainly plastic, non-recyclable product be great?
Let me list the ways:
- Michael O’Leary says so.
- If it wasn’t for promotional pens, I would have no pens. At home and in the office, the promotional pen is my scribble stick of choice.
- Companies which earn more money in a heartbeat than I do in a week give them away for free. Banks, charities, airlines, suppliers, recruitment agencies, office stationery suppliers and many others have pens available that customers can acquire, walk in and take, be given as a result of a transaction or be given in the hope of future business.
- They’re all over the place. Looking around me now. I can see a pen that I received from a transatlantic airline the last time I flew with them, a pen I was sent in a charity’s mailshot, another which came from a firm I did previous business with, and one which arrived as part of the paperwork when I took delivery of my latest car.
- They’re cheap to produce or buy for the companies sending them out.
- They save customers money, because then the customers don’t have to buy pens themselves.
- They’re almost throwaway advertising. I could tell you the names of the companies whose pens I use on a daily basis. Whether I actually have or will in the future use the services of those organisations is up to me. Whether I donate to the charity causes ditto.
- If used as part of a mailing campaign, they’re light to send by regular post.
- Anywhere where you need to sign a form is a natural place to have a pot of company branded biros. If a customer or client happens to wander off with one, it’s not the end of the world. Banks, reception desks, car sales showrooms, recruitment agencies and mobile phone outlets are all suitable locations for promotional pens.
- If you work in public services, chances are that you will have a stash on your desk. Because public services will do anything to cut costs. And that includes slashing office budgets on stationery. No unbranded pens in the last hospital department stationery cupboard I looked in, nor in the council chambers I attended most recently.
These are ten reasons why promotional pens are dynamite. Plus, they’re useful, cheap to produce and easy to give away to those who need a pen. Or did I say that already? I have been given as many promotional pens by colleagues as I have received them myself from people providing a service to me. They’re easy to acquire and easy to give away. You’re passing the advertising on, for a start, which is what the firms who provided them want you to do. Word of pen marketing, if you will. I remember years ago, when I worked in an estate agent’s office, the personalised pen I had used for my first week (and forgotten to put in the drawer on Friday night) had disappeared by the following Monday morning. I was rather upset, because that pen had been a present. The manager’s wife found and purchased me another, but I had already learned my lesson. In an office where people are there when you are not, do not leave anything on the desk that you consider is unequivocally ‘yours’. A stash of promotional pens would have been very useful there, for sure. For all the thousands of pounds worth of business transacted in a typical estate agents’ office, there was no pile of free pens.
Possessiveness. A human trait. Some people are possessive about their personal space. Others about their mugs, crockery or cutlery. Or pens. With promotional pens, I am nowhere near as possessive as I am about those I provided from my own money. Probably because I know there will always be another free pen coming my way soon. I’m on enough mailing lists to make it so, and also have enough clutter at home that any crate of stored items I open is likely to yield a writing implement of some ilk.
Free pens are great. Because they’re free. Because you receive them, put them somewhere safe and forget about them. Because there seems to be a non-stop supply of them these days. Because there is always a firm which needs to advertise itself cheaply. Because I’m a hoarder and always seem to have a stash of them from places I’ve been given them or they have been left for me. I have a reputation for picking up freebies and samples from anywhere I see them, and remember raiding the art room lost property bowl at school for pens which still worked rather than buying a whole pack of new pens myself. Because my husband and his colleagues always need a pen for something or the other. Free pens. Just because. On so many levels.
The advertising even works, because I can name you the providers of the free pens around me now. And I have never been known to leave a freebie lying, lost and lonely, when I have the choice to pick it up and take it with me.