Who doesn’t love free stuff? A few months ago, we had the opportunity to represent at a swanky New York Hotelier Convention. Sure, we could have ordered some Beer Koozies and tri-color highlighters and called it a day. But we’re Zoom, and while many of us like beer, that wasn’t the vibe we were going for.
Putting our collective heads together, we talked about the kinds of things we liked to get when attending conferences, and how often the tchotchke’s never even make it out of the bag — After all, unless you’re Greg, most of us can only drink one beer at a time. At this point, we could have gone online and ordered 350 pre-printed bags, but some of us have control issues, and we wanted them to be just right. Conferences can really suck the life right out of you, so we opted for an Energy theme.
First on our list of “Must Have’s” were chocolate covered espresso beans. We found ours at K&F Coffee Roasters right here in The PDX. When I told Shirley what we were doing, she called back and offered us Hotel sized bags of their amazing Organic Bella Selva coffee as well. Next up were some kind of energy bar. After extensive research, I found Larabars, which came in a wide variety of flavors and are made from whole ingredients — Just the ticket, but I was having a hard time finding them in bulk, so I started making calls and got hooked up with Stacy J. at their corporate office, she not only found us variety packs of the smaller .78 oz size bars, she shipped them to us for free. As in, completely free! All we needed now were Emergen-C pouches for the participants to put in their water bottles, which we located at the Downtown GNC.
Once I got done “hand crafting” our bags (all 250 of ‘em), it was time to insert the goods.
Not only were these mostly fun to make, they were a huge hit at the conference — It’s always a good sign when people sneak back for more. We’ve done similar projects for a few other clients, personalizing them with monogrammed golf balls and tee’s or thumb drives and snacks, they’re a creative way to get your name remembered and stand out from the crowd of Koozies and highlighters.
A big, huge thanks again to our cross marketing partners, K & J Coffee Roasters and Larabars, you went above and beyond anything we expected, and we were already fans!
Healing Nicely From My Iron Wounds,
Mrs. Knightly
