What Is Promotional Products Week

We may be a little biased, but we think promotional products and merchandise are incredible tools for a marketing toolbox. This week, from 2nd October – 6th October, the BPMA (British Promotional Merchandise Association) host Promotional Products Week, a time for there to be a big “spotlight on promotional products targeted towards the end user buyer”.

The reason the BPMA decided to choose for this week to fall in October, is because October is in fact a big month for companies to begin “buying for events, conferences and pre-Christmas gifts”. The aim of Promotional Products Week is to get everyone involved, from the companies supplying the merchandise to the end user buyer, and to encourage everyone to share their stories about promotional products and campaigns.

The theme for this year’s Promotional Products Week is ‘Thank You’, so the BPMA are encouraging the hashtag #ThankYouPPW for all social media platforms and revealed that the “best use of thank you will be published in our magazine, Product Media magazine”. This is because giving away branded promotional gifts is a successful way of acknowledging your customers, anyone you do business with, or anyone you just want to thank. Furthermore, the BPMA are supporting the charity Alzheimer’s Society, United Against Dementia, so when people use the hashtag #ThankYouPPW they are also encouraging them to donate and help raise over £10,000 for this worthy cause.

We want to share with you why we think promotional products are so important, so we’ll let some statistics from SageWorld do the talking…

- 8/10 consumers own between 1 and 10 promotional products
- 53% of these people use a promotional product at least once a week
- 6/10 people keep their promotional gifts for up to two years
- 48% of consumers would like to be given promotional products more often
- 89% of consumers can recall the advertiser of a promotional product they had received in the past two years
- Adding a promotional product to the media mix increases the effectiveness of other media by up to 44%
- Women are more likely to own bags, writing tools and calendars, whilst men are more likely to have shirts and caps.
- 77% of consumers say a promotional product’s usefulness is the number-one reason to keep it
   - Health and safety products, computer products and writing tools were ranked the most useful

Will you be getting involved in Promotional Products Week? You can check out our Instagram page to see how we’ve been using #ThankYouPPW to get some inspiration, and we would love to see what pictures you post!