What is the best swag to give away at a video game convention?
Regardless of where you are handing out promotional SWAG, it is important that the promotional products be useful. You want to give away promotional items that your customers will want to own. Gimmicky gifts may be fun to give away but studies have shown they have a limited promotional life. It is a good idea to try to promote to your target audience whenever possible. Products that video game lovers will like when playing games will be things such as mouse pads, t-shirts and computer mice. Though these are obvious gifts, you may decide to go with much less expensive products such a good quality logo printed plastic pens, mugs or other low cost stationery products. These are all products that are required daily. Remember that you do not need to spend a lot of money for your promotional SWAG to be both useful and appreciated. The key is to get your brand into your target customers’ minds as often as possible. I like to think of promotional merchandise in terms of cost per impression sim
The best swag I’ve gotten at a convention is a free copy of a game that still has retail value. For example, at PAX 2009, everyone got a free copy of the MMORPG Lord of the Rings Online – each copy of which came with a free month of play time. (This is before LotRO went free-to-play.) Because there are always extra swag bags toward the end of cons, and the organizers usually encourage people to take the extras, a friend and I brought home a dozen copies of the game, which let our entire group of friends have a free month-long demo. Most of us ended up playing for a few months, so it was a win for Turbine as well.
