Year-end approaching, and the merchandise brief isn’t done? You’re not out of options. But the way you approach the brief needs to change.
October is certainly not too late to order branded corporate gifts before year-end. It is, however, the point where your deadline starts having a much bigger say in what is realistically possible.
And this isn’t only about corporate gifts.
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South African businesses are heading into a busy few months of events, activations, conferences, staff functions, summer campaigns and customer promotions. All of them will soon be competing for merchandise, stock, branding and production time.
The answer isn’t simply to grab whatever is still available. It’s to get smarter about the brief.
What can you still order before year-end?
Quite a lot.
Locally available, ready-to-brand merchandise generally gives you the most flexibility when timelines start getting shorter. Depending on stock, quantity and branding requirements, there are still plenty of options across drinkware, bags, apparel, headwear, technology, outdoor products and promotional giveaways.
Local manufacturing can also open up more interesting possibilities where the brief calls for something different.
Where things become trickier is with highly customised products, specialist manufacturing or imported merchandise. These generally need longer lead times, so the closer we get to year-end, the more important it becomes to balance the big idea with what can actually be produced well and delivered on time.
As I often tell clients, a tight deadline doesn’t necessarily mean settling for a boring product. It just means we need to be clever about where we look and what we recommend.
Don’t start with “What should we buy?”
Start with what are we trying to achieve?
Are you looking for 5,000 giveaways that create visibility at an activation? Merchandise for an event? Something useful for employees? A promotional item supporting a campaign? Or perhaps 20 premium items for important clients?
Those are completely different briefs.
The audience, objective and occasion usually tell us far more about what will work.
A cap that gets worn throughout a summer event could be more valuable than an expensive item that goes home in a bag and is never seen again. Likewise, an executive gift shouldn’t be chosen using the same thinking as a 1,000-unit promotional giveaway.
There isn’t one “best” promotional product. There is a better product for the brief.
Give your supplier room to solve the brief
You don’t need a ten-page document. Give us the basics: what you’re planning, who it’s for, how many you need, what you have to spend and when you need it.
Even if you don’t know exactly what you want yet, that’s enough to start a useful conversation.
In fact, sometimes not arriving with a fixed product idea is better. It gives us the opportunity to look at the objective and recommend ideas that fit the audience, budget and deadline rather than trying to force a particular product into the brief.
This becomes particularly important later in the year when stock availability and production schedules can change quickly.
Work backwards from the deadline
When timelines are tight, the delivery date becomes part of the sourcing strategy.
Start with when the merchandise needs to be in your hands, then work backwards through branding, production, approvals and sourcing. That quickly establishes which options make sense and which ones are likely to introduce unnecessary risk.
And if you’ve left things later than intended, don’t immediately default to whatever happens to be available.
Start with the brief. Then find the best solution that can realistically be delivered within it.
At MerchGuru, that’s how we approach promotional merchandise. We’re not simply interested in finding something that can carry a logo. We want to understand what you’re trying to achieve and find a solution that makes sense for your brand, audience, budget and deadline.
Need branded merchandise before year-end?
Tell us what you’re planning, your audience, quantity, budget and deadline, and we’ll help you work out what’s realistically possible and worth doing.
Sanine Baird is the founder of MerchGuru and Abstract7 Creative Media Solutions, with more than 25 years’ experience across branding, communications, promotional campaigns and merchandise sourcing.
[email protected]
www.merchguru.co.za
www.abstract7.co.za
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