The Power of Touch

People are happy to receive them and often carry them around with them for months: ballpoint pens, UBS sticks or key rings. T-shirts, teacups and beautifully designed notepads have also been popular for years. With the logo of the person giving the gift, these small tokens of appreciation can remind us in the most unlikely of places, even away from TV commercials or online games, which company we value as a partner. True to the motto: "Small gifts keep customers coming back!"

Just as important as posters

"Promotional gifts are the only form of advertising for which people say thank you," says Marcel Spiess, President of Promoswiss. His association of the Swiss promotional products industry estimates that around CHF 500 million is spent on promotional gifts in Switzerland every year. This is almost as much as the CHF 515 million spent on all outdoor advertising - excluding production costs - for posters, neon, transportation and sports stadiums in 2011, according to WEMF. In Germany, expenditure on promotional gifts is estimated at 3.4 billion euros. According to a study, high-quality items are particularly popular at Christmas. An average of 42.5 euros is spent on this. Cheaper giveaways are mainly used at trade fairs and customer visits. Only 10 percent of the exhibitors in Lucerne were local companies. Most of the items were supplied from Germany. There is no discernible trend here. Calendars, pens and lighters are still very popular. However, it is impossible to overlook the increasingly imaginative creations for USB sticks. Interested companies are also immediately grateful for the ever more amazing gimmicks. The effect of promotional gifts is rarely "measurable" in concrete terms. However, all market people agree that you can have a much more lasting conversation with a customer at the trade fair stand or during a direct visit if you leave them with a small gadget as a memento. Andreas Panzeri

For the fourth time, the industry association Promoswiss presented the Promo Fritz Award at the PSF Forum (Swiss Trade Fair for Promotional Products and Textiles) at the Hotel Schweizerhof in Lucerne. The creative paint box from Faber Castell (top left) won gold for its design. In the "Campaign of the Year" category, the Fritz went to Cadolino by comTeam from Schlieren. The Promoswiss member developed a football and a magic cube for the biotechnology company Bachem to present amino acids in a playful way (top right). Promotional gifts from over 65 exhibitors were on display at the congress in Lucerne's Schweizerhof. Nobody wanted to identify a specific trend. "It always has to be new."