Your Logo Goes Here!

File this under ‘sad and funny at the same time.’ Here’s an embossed aluminum pen that my parents recently received in the mail at their house; a promotional-products company sent it to me, hoping to score a new account.

The info on the ballpoint dates from a few years ago when, for the space of a couple months between real-estate transactions, I temporarily moved my family in with my parents who live in a suburb just east of Vancouver. At the time, I was doing some contract gear-writing work for a since-shuttered Conde Nast men’s shopping magazine called CARGO.

I got a good chuckle out of the fact that some far-off privately held customer-leads database thinks that this once-glossy title is not only still in business, but headquartered in Burnaby.

Then it sunk in: How many thousands of these things went out on spec to similarly obsolete firms and addresses? And beyond that, how much logo-crested crap is presently churning its way through the warehouses and shipping channels, into the grateful hands of business people and consumers, who extract whatever utility and joy they can before ultimately handing these items off to the landfills?

Quite a lot, it turns out. According to the Promotional Products Association International, a trade group representing the fine people who make, import, distribute and sell mouse pads, stress balls, magnets, umbrellas, footballs, calendars, plastic coffee mugs, nylon tote bags, watches, ball caps, this is a $19.4 billion industry.

Sigh. If you believe the group’s research, consumer demand keeps the schwag engine running at top speed. Apparently, lots of us still love getting something for “free.” Utlimately all this marketing momentum needs to move into the digital realm, the atoms need to turn into bits. But when’s that going to happen?

How long can this madness continue? Anyone care to weigh in here?