One of the most effective marketing tricks is putting advertising on things that are practical and actually get used. Given how many people work in offices, or have home offices, office accessories are one of the best canvases for marketing material.
Another benefit to branding office accessories is that there are so many different options available to you, depending on what message you want to get across, your budget, and similar factors. Some of the most popular options for branding include:
Mouse pads
Mouse pads are useful for a couple of reasons; firstly, they’re practical. Just about everyone uses a computer for work, and just about everyone uses a mouse to interact with the computer. A mouse pad therefore becomes a significant part of a person’s daily routine.
The second benefit to the mouse pad is the amount of real estate that they offer. The front side of the mousepad is large, and offers plenty of opportunity to incorporate logos and graphic elements onto it. You probably don’t want to print a lot of text onto a mouse pad, because no one’s going to sit there and read one, but as an opportunity for every day branding, the mouse pad is hard to ignore.
They’re inexpensive to produce, and work as corporate gifts, too. You could easily use these as giveaways, if the design is appealing enough.
Bookmarks
Bookmarks are incredibly handy in the office. Whether it’s to keep track of important pages within briefing documents, or as a way of helping with archiving, the modern office worker will find some way to make good use of these sturdy bits of card.
The benefit of bookmarks to the marketer is that they’re cheap and easy to produce. You can provide as many to the client as they might need, and as those bookmarks float around the office and are used by different people (because documents do tend to get shared), the visibility they provide back to your brand is office-wide.
Make sure you design your bookmark nicely, make it aesthetically pleasing and you’ll find that small investment in card stock on your part gets used over and over again.
Notepads
While we find ourselves doing more of our work on computers every day, there’s still an enduring role for the notepad. It’s easier to take into quick meetings, and less distracting to others in the meeting room than the mechanical ‘click-click-click’ of keys. It’s also convenient to carry around when out and about to jot down quick ideas and notes before they’re forgotten. For this reason, professionals will rarely be without a notepad in their backpack or briefcase.
For brands, the cover of a notepad is an indispensable opportunity. Not only is it a example of daily use office supplies, but because notebooks are taken into client meetings and the like, they also tend to be visible to a wide web of people.
Calendars
Another example of an office accessory that would get daily use, calendars are an excellent branding opportunity. Calendars tend to be hung in clear view, meaning they draw the attention of foot traffic, and because of their utility, they get looked at nearly daily.
Another benefit of calendars is that the standard is to have imagery above the dates itself. This gives you a great opportunity to include branding, as well as contact details, secure in the knowledge that the calendar will be relevant for a full year – it’s rare indeed that a piece of marketing collateral has a shelf life of 12 months.
Coffee mugs
The quickest way to a busy office worker’s heart is to fuel their coffee addiction, and custom coffee mugs are an ideal way to make sure that you’re the first thing they see every day. A good custom coffee mug is bright and entertaining, as most people have more than one coffee mug, so you want to make sure that yours is the one they use, while also containing that all-important branding, so that they remember who gave the mug to them.
Coffee mugs tend to have a long shelf life (until someone finally drops and breaks one by accident). They also often get shared around as part of the office cutlery collection – all of which helps you to maximise the visibility of them.
Pens
Last, but not least, who could forget about the humble pen! Pens make for great promotional material, because people are always looking for a pen, and the pen tends to be very fluid in the office, getting shared around whenever someone needs to jot down some notes (but can’t find their own pen).
The trick with pens is to make your pen a cut above the truly disposable ones. Whether it’s made of metal or thick plastic, as long as your branded pen writes nicely and feels good in the hand, you’ll have given the office worker something that they’ll get surprisingly attached to, and want to have ready to hand frequently.
These are just some of the top ideas for office stationery – from bags to stickers, USB drives to phone battery chargers, there are all kinds of promotional merchandise that can work in an office setting. The key is to make it aesthetically pleasing, and to make it useful. If you can give an office worker something that they’ll use every day, you’ll have some of the most powerful marketing that money can buy.
Anything around the office can be used as a potential promotional product – it’s all about having the creativity and foresight to act upon the opportunity. For help with all your printing needs, look no further than MVP Print. Check out our product range and then contact us today for more information.
