Some of our customers are just looking for the kind of promotional gift that makes people smile. The want something with a little more of the feel-good factor, like a toy or something with good humor. People like to receive things at the tradeshow or the company party that serve no real functional business purpose, but are for fun. People take these types of promotional items home to the kids, and the promotion spends years in a household or on the desk making impression after impression.

Custom promotional stuffed animal toys are a good fit to satisfy this kind of request. And the selection has expanded past the standard little teddy bear with the logo on the shirt. here are three fun options.

Giraffe Stretcher Stuffed Animal with extra long legs

Custom Pucker Fish Stuffed Animal - Requires 500 piece minimum

Promotional Stuffed Gorilla

Benders are a unique collectible with a fun and irresistible quality. These fun and addictive toys are almost like poseable stick figures. According to the manufacturer "The Benders are durable plastic coated wire characters that have magnets in their hands and feet. You can bend, sculpt and pose The Benders into nearly any position imaginable. Most Benders come in their own tin."

The magnets make these toys fun for the office, as the benders can hold paperclips and there are all kinds of places to put them within cubicles or on desks and filing cabinets. The website The Bender Times is a tongue-in-cheek place for the avid Benders fan. They are now manufactured by Hog Wild Toys, and the company has a division specifically created for the advertising specialties industry. They come in collectible tins that can be imprinted with a logo, and some of the Benders hold objects or are accessorized with items that can be logoed as well.

One fun little activity would be to make your own stop motion film as these little figures can be posed similar to the wire based figures in Tim Burton's movies such as Corpse Bride or The Nightmare Before Christmas. An example of a little film is at The Bender Times.

Benders for promotional use can be found here. They are great for tradeshows when you want something light-hearted and fun.

Tradeshow Classics

January is a big month in the promotional products industry. It marks the kick-off of the tradeshow season when millions of business people travel billions of miles, don their walking shoes, eat expensive hot dogs, and carry their water bottles as they walk the nation's convention centers to see what is new in the world of industry.

As an exhibitor you have one important goal: to drive as much traffic as possible to your exhibit. Booth placement is a critical component, but a more well-placed exhibit often only comes at more expense or with senority as an exhibitor. However, the tried and true way to drive traffic and ensure the success of your trade show and your message is to offer a promotional item that will be coveted by every attendee and exhibitor on the tradeshow floor.

You want people asking each other out on the floor, "Where did you get that?"

Here are three ideas to get your juices flowing. I will offer additional ideas from time to time:

7" x 5" Illusions Journal Notebook
Logoed Bungee Rockets
The Ad Walker - Toss this fun stress relief item at the wall and watch it crawl down, while displaying your ad.

I have some other posts in the works, but I just wanted to put out a quick little post, because I was looking at the analytics for our website ameripromo.com and noticed that one hot little item is this Dual USB/Auto Heater Mug.

It keeps drinks piping hot and is the ultimate gift for the road warrior business person or can be powered by a USB connection on a computer to keep your soup or hot beverage ready.

I found it to be innovative, and since so many people are looking for it, I decided to give it a little press.

Thanksgiving is only two days away, and our house is bustling with activity. We are going to celebrate Thanksgiving with many of my wife's family as well as my parents and my three youngest siblings who are still at home.

We were gifted a turkey by a chef friend that must weigh at least 40 lbs. I honestly do not know what pan we are going to cook it in, but we were given gourmet instructions and recipe for cooking it, and it was raised wild on a large ranch in Eastern Oregon, so it will likely be a very yummy bird.

The day after Thanksgiving is traditionally the largest retail shopping day of the year. Truthfully, I hate shopping that day. I hate the lines, and even though the sales are a little bit better than usual, it seems that everything in department stores is always on sale anyway, and the savings just isn't worth the time tradeoff.

With five children of my own, I do get to play Santa Claus, and it is certainly enjoyable to shop for my children and everyone else. I do a lot of this online, where I can take my time, compare items and find things that I cannot locally. We try not to make the Santa Claus thing to big of a deal in our home, because the holiday is for us, first the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ; second a time to be with family; and lastly a time to get and give.

The Western tradition of Santa Claus is embedded more deeply in the subconscious than most other cultural icons and with good reason: there is just a lot to love about the jolly old man and the smiles he brings to the young and old.

There are a few promotional products with a Santa Claus theme. Here are links to three:

Santa Claus Stress Toy
Rubber Duck Santa Claus Very cool!
The Autobiography of Santa Claus (This book is imprintable with your company's logo.

One promotional item that continues to enjoy tremendous popularity is the water bottle. The promotional products industry and its retail counterparts have produced myriad new styles and functionality in their new products.

The biggest shift has been an upwards shift in quality, and a downwards shift in price on the high end. The ultimate waterbottle, in my opinion, is the polycarbonate water bottle with the threaded cap. It is generally available in handsome translucent colors and it makes a nice and crisp setting for a logo.

The lid styles and uses of polycarbonate water bottles continue to proliferate. Nalgene Outdoor pioneered the polycarbonate water bottle, and I learned today that Nalgene is now even doing baby bottles. Very cool.

Polycarbonate water bottles will not transfer the taste or smell of plastic to their beverage. These products are popular for advertising your logo at work, shopping centers, gyms, universities and other schools. They get used, and they make a company's advertising impression over and over again.

Due to their strong price/quality value, Polycarbonate bottles by H2Go are some of the most popular in the promotional products industry.

In my last post, I referenced the nesting instinct that often prevails in our thoughts and actions at this time of year. I've read multiple news articles and features that the desire to be closer to home isn't just seasonal. This desire to be at home and to nurture important relationships, and the spending patterns that accompany this trend has increased substantially since 9/11. The runup in housing prices is directly connected to this (although it is also the result of other macroeconomic and speculative factors as well, and housing prices are coming down a fact which is likely to continue until the excesses are wrung out of the market.)

Nevertheless, the nesting desire is reflected in our purchasing habits. We want to obtain things that represent family, and to enhance quiet evenings spent with friends and loved ones. We want to surround ourselves with beauty and with quality. There are many companies that are recognizing and capitalizing on this trend. Home improvement retailers, furniture makers and retailers, builders, mass market retailers, real estate and mortgage financing companies are all naturally suited to cater their offerings and their marketing to this trend.

However, any company wanting to offer a nice gift that enhances and appreciates this dynamic in the market place is making a good choice. And the gift will almost always be appreciated. Here are a few promotional product ideas for giving a nesting gift:

A logoed custom fondue set
Cutter & Buck desktop photo box
5 Piece Cheese Board
Big Sweatshirt Blanket

Giving gifts to employees and clients is a wonderful way to recognize and appreciate. Yet thing that really matters is the time and words of appreciation you give to the people you care about.

Just over the past couple of days, the weather has turned rainy. It is a comfortable rain, the type that quietly patters on the streets and sidewalks and windshields of cars. It grays the skies, and the fall colors take on subtle hues like those found in a soothing and subdued watercolor painting. The weather induces a certain nesting desire - to curl up with a good read or make a good cup of hot chocolate. I had my first cup of hot chocolate the other day.

I've been thinking about seasonal promotional items, fit for Thanksgiving and Christmas giving. Our clients over the years have given everything from food to nice jackets to their customers and employees over the years. One of the more popular gifts is the promotional coffee mug. However, it seems that everyone's cupboards and dextops are full of such mugs.

In order to stand out and be memorable, you have to do something a little extra. When a mug is given as a gift, one way to enhance its appeal is to add a mug stuffer. This is a foil bag of hot chocolate mix or coffee decorated with your company's logo or message. It gives a real polished feel to the gift.

Another important consideration is to select a mug that stands out - one that is a different shape or finish will get noticed before the classic "C" handled mug. I particularly like this one.

It is called the Seattle Mug. It has sharp contrasting white interior and hip color choices for the exterior.

I also really like the look of this elegant acrylic tumbler called the Monaco Tumbler.

Over the years, I have seen or sold hundreds of variations of drinkware. I love the strong selection at The Creative Source. They are very innovative in styling and will get a company noticed.

I have a thing for USB drives and flash memory. They also make very stylish promotional gifts. They come in so many shapes and sizes from the small keychain variants to the larger USB drives. They are available in credit card shapes, in translucent, or even in fully custom shapes such as in the shape of a jetliner.

They are useful, and have a spylike quality. I feel like Jack Bauer or James Bond, when I slide it into the USB Port to upload or download data.

The coolest USB drive that I have seen for high-perceived value promotional giving is this one. It is in leather and brushed metal and the leather can be debossed with a company logo. A gift like this gets used and appreciated and in my view is the perfect self-promoting executive gift.

After reading blogs of all flavors and stripes for a couple of years, I've decided to take the plunge and start my own blog. I've never blogged, but I do write, both professionally and personally.

I work in two separate professions. As a full-time vocation, I am the business manager for a law firm in exquisite southern Oregon. And part-time, I work for American Promotions, Inc., an advertising specialties business, in Utah County, Utah which I started and operated for nine years full-time, before taking my current position. The duality of my professional life provides me with more enjoyable variety, opportunity, and challenges than an individual should be allowed. It makes for rich experiences and my life intersects fascinating people.

The promotional products industry and its possibilities for connecting with consumers and businesses enthuse me. When I see a promotion done well, the "cool" factor jumps out at me, and I give a mental ovation to its creator. I have enough of these epiphanic moments about promotional products, that I felt a blog dedicated to the subject may be of use to business owners and marketing teams that are trolling the web for ideas.

I know what to look for and more importantly what to avoid. My blog will contain links to the products and ideas I will discuss. I also offer the simple disclosure, that I do benefit if items are purchased from our company's website www.ameripromo.com ; however, it is my intention and hope to provide truly useful information about selecting and gifting promotional products in a way that business grows and relationships are created. After all, the whole idea is to promote.