swag
The thing about having a business license is that your company info gets harvested by all kinds of people. I get lots of company credit card offers (no thanks!) and info about employee insurance, but every now and then I get free pens. People who sell promotional stuff send samples of their wares in hopes of enticing you to buy their brand with your name and address on it.
The quality’s going up! First I got plain hard pens with “wearwithstylecom” screened on the side, then I got one with a gel grip, and yesterday I got one with a gel grip, metal accents, AND someone took the time to separate my name into its individual components instead of pasting it directly from their mailing list. And I can have some made for only 99 cents a pen!
Again, no thanks. If they can afford to send them out randomly for free, I don’t want to think about how little it costs them to make these. And things with my logo would be useless. My Jayne hat packaging is fairly authentic, I can’t be cramming pens with my company name in the box, it just looks bad.
Still, I hearken back to the days of working in TV and getting all kinds of free stuff. It’s been 7 years and I’m still wearing T-shirts from cancelled shows the networks were promoting. Good times, good times.
I don’t need the swag I’m getting now, but I still get a little kick out of it. It’s one less thing I have to purchase, too. Why buy the pen when you can get the ink for free?
Hats up next: NC, CA, IL. Go Windy City!