Thursday, February 2, 2012

Corporate Gifts That You Want to Keep

Every few years if you are sensible you will go through your house and discard the things that you no longer use to freshen up your home and make space for new things. Some of the items that may end up in the trash or to be given away are corporate gifts. So I spent some time thinking about the corporate gifts that I have that I have kept. I have to say that one of my firm favourites was the maglite. I love this corporate gift because we still get the odd load shedding or power failures. So a torch is always handy to have around. What I have also found very useful about the maglite is that when you unscrew the top, it turns into a candle. If you have young children in the house you will know that often the lights going out suddenly means creates a lot of stress of them, so for them, to have a torch handy really makes a power failure a lot more manageable. There is not thing quite as stressful as having to scrounge around for candles and having a distressed child crying or calling "mommy!" in the background. Speaking about children, every year we try to get to carols by candle light session and so one of the corporate gifts that I have that I always keep is the battery operated candle. We just change batteries and do not have to worry about melting candle wax and little burnt fingers. Our family also all have petzl headlights. Petzl is a really terrific brand and some of our clients only want Petzl and nothing else. As we love the outdoors, if we go camping and we have to go to the bathroom at night the headlamps are a great way to show the way when your hands are full of toiletry, towels etc. My husband does a lot a customer visits, so for him the thermal coffee mugs are the best corporate gifts. He tends to work late at night and then rush off in the morning to clients and that cup of coffee in the car helps to rev up the brain cells. For our anniversary a few years ago the restaurant where we celebrated gave us a free shooter in a light flashing shot glass. The lights are activated only when the glass is full and then go off when the liquid is gone. We still keep it as a momentum and of course it has the restaurant’s number on it, so it is a great business card for them. Another favorite corporate gift is a small tool kit. Tool kits may seem like boring corporate gifts, but they are so very useful. My nine year old daughter loves it because it is compact and easy to use and she once even decided to fix the door handle of the bathroom door. One of the screws had come out and she wanted to replace it. For minor things, nothing beats a small tool kit. A few years ago I took a weekend break with a few couples and while the guys were playing golf, then ladies spent the morning leisurely getting ready for a lunch out. Alas we found that no one had brought a two prong plug and so there was no place to plug in the hair dryer. Luckily I had a small tool kit, so I took a standard three prong plug off one of the lamps and did a temporary swap for the hairdryer. There are a few quite a few more corporate gifts that that I would definitely keep, but those would probably spring to mind at the next spring clean. But it seems that from this latest spring clean that light orientated corporate gifts seem to be a firm favorite. They are never wasted because it is great to have them available in each room for guests. Like insurance, a good torch as a corporate gift only presents its true value when you really need it.