You’re probably doing corporate swag wrong.

Most corporate swag ends up in a landfill.

For reasons including, but not limited to:

• Ugly design

• Poor garment quality or fit

• Poor printing methods, and, in my opinion, worst of all…

• The fact that they were simply designed for one-time use from the start.

We’ve all been there:

You’re at a conference and receive a logo tee (or ten) from a company you’ve never heard of. You bring it home, where you may use it as a sleep shirt once. But then you realize that the t-shirt itself isn’t very comfortable. And the print on the front is thick and plasticky. And, actually, you’ve already got a drawer of sleep shirts that are actually comfortable.

Throwing it away feels wrong or wasteful. So you make the pilgrimage to Goodwill, bag of logo tees in hand, ready to donate.

But the thing is: no one really wants a logo tee for a company they’ve never heard of.

So when you donate a corporate logo tee, it will likely end up sitting in Goodwill for several months, gathering dust and getting passed over in favor of less “Hello, buy my software”-y apparel options.

…At which point it will then get sent to a landfill, just by way of Goodwill rather than by way of you.

My call to you:

If you can’t afford to do swag well, don’t do it at all.

If you’re going to create custom swag for your company, you have a responsibility to do it in the least damaging way possible — to people and to the planet.

Your bottom line isn’t the bottom line.

I’ve created a few resources to help you in your journey to create better swag — swag that will actually get used rather than ending up in a landfill.

Enjoy!

• “To Swag or Not to Swag?” Flowchart

  • Use this to help make the decision of whether or not to design branded swag — and how to go about doing so.

• Branded Swag: The Dos, Don’ts, and “Oh God, Not Another Logo Mug”s

  • This guide will help you think outside the swag box and come up with actually-cool ideas for branded goods & apparel.