The Politics of Promotional Products

During the months leading up to an important political election sales of politically oriented promotional products can jump by as much as 50% over yearly averages.  With the extremely competitive nature of the campaigns this year it is no surprise that this number is being exceeded.  In fact most major media outlets are reporting record setting fund-raising drives by both candidates from the Democratic Party.  Indeed over the last ten days the Clinton Campaign reports raising over ten million dollars which is is absolutely astonishing.

 So far this year our political promotional items business is up over 80% from last year with the core purchases coming from the discount promotional items segments.  As is typical many of the purchases involve lower end items that can be mass distributed such as bumper stickers, signs and other related political promotional items.   Surprisingly this year money is being spent on longer lasting more durable goods such as promotional mugs and drinkware.  This puzzled us a little bit until we sat down and contemplated the shift from less expensive items.   With at least two candidates now out of the race in 2008 the idea of having a longer lasting promotional tumbler carrying their message in years to come makes perfect sense.   With several of the candidates likely to run in future elections the branded promotional products that carry the slogan and name of the candidate but not the year can be reused in the proceeding years.   This is not to say promotional pens haven’t been as popular as in previous years but overall I think we have reached a saturation point on political gadgets with a desire this year to give supporters something new.  Promotional banners and any type of signage continue to lead the way for us in 2008 in terms of political promotional items but mugs may end up taking the largest share by the end of the political season.

The races themselves are quite interesting with Senator Obama continuing to sweep State after State over the last few days.  Our local candidate former Governor Romney dropped out of the Republican race earlier in the week as it became clear the delegate count was breaking towards Senator McCain.   It was a wise move for the former Governor as he is a young politician by modern standards and rather than continuing to waste money and time on a lost caused he stepped aside.   Whether or not he will be offered a position within the McCain ticket is unknown but it certainly seems unlikely given the very public animosity Senator McCain demonstrated during the campaign.   In any case it has certainly been an exciting race and fortunately for all there are centrist choices on both sides of the aisle.

 The push towards green promotional products continues to be quite strong.  The major dilemma is stocking and availability issues as demand is rapidly outstripping supply.  There is also still a limited number of available recycled products with few color choices and even fewer designs and models.   That appears to be continually changing as several vendors have released new products in February in response to the incredible demand.  Before offering these new products for sale we are bringing in samples to check for quality, consistency and durability.  A recycled product does no good to anyone if it does not stand the test of time and falls apart at the hands of our customers and in turn your customers.  We expect to be able to offer reviews on some of these items by late this week and expect to get them on the website shortly thereafter.  We added the new Anvil Organic Tee ten days ago and have received over a dozen orders already so no doubt organic promotional items  will be huge in 2008.

 In the meantime remember we have hundreds of high quality promotional items available with dozens more being added each and every day.  If you cannot find what you are looking for on the site feel free to contact us through email or the contact form.  In many cases we offer discounts to customers on the spot if they are unable to find a product we later quote.   We figure it is the least we can do in those circumstances.

One last note related to comments on this and other blogs.  We recently were forced to delete several comments that were blatant spam.   A quick Google search revealed the same messages in hundreds of similar blogs much to our shagrin.   I use that term because we held one of the organizations involved in the highest regard and were really suprised to see that they had someone actively spamming blogs on their behalf.  We openly discuss competitors here and have publicly praised several over the course of this blog.  We also welcome comments so long as they actually add some value and aren’t a blatant advertisement.   WordPress appears to be actively marking more and more comments as spam likely based on other bloggers checking the spam box when deleting.   Enjoy your week!