More than personalized gifts, corporate swags have HUGE potential to help reinforce the values of your company culture, even more so when working remotely.
This is possible precisely because they’re different products, with incomparable quality and offer the possibility to inspire and create connection between employees/customers and your brand.
Besides, we know that in these times of high connectivity and technological globalization, one thing leads to another. Like, for example, when an employee receives a swag from your company and posts it on social media or shares it in the workgroup.
When that happens, people he works with see and feel compelled to find out more about what generated this recognition. As a result, they become more engaged in the behavior in which there was positive reinforcement.
This is simple, but it is your company culture being propagated and reinforced in a natural, organic and positive way.
Despite the great advantages of remote work, such as increased productivity, there is a great challenge in providing great experiences through endomarketing actions, such as valuing employees and integrating your team members.
Also, there’s the possibility that employees feel a little lost and start to question the company’s values because they’re in a moment of apparent tension and insecurity with that less present spirit of union.
But what are swags exactly?
Swags are promotional items used to promote your company’s values and promote culture in endomarketing campaigns, events, rewards or any other type of engagement action.
Now you may be asking yourself: “Okay, but what’s the difference between this swag and the corporate gifts I already know?!”
In real life, the difference with swags is the possibility of inserting the spirit of the company into high quality corporate products that are actually used on a daily basis. If, on the one hand, the gifts are limited to a customized logo or standard elements of the brand, the swag goes a step further, raising the stamped and very well represented culture.
Being practical, corporate swags bring the company’s values to life and help propagate its corporate culture.
In addition to having creative and original customization (usually the specialized company gives a lot of support in this construction and brainstorming), there’s a context created to give gifts to employees or customers, making this experience unique and fun.
In this way, the possibility increases dramatically of swags being incorporated into people’s routine for a longer period of time.
A possible context, for example, could be to reward the employees with the best performance during the company’s anniversary, thanking them for their delivery and commitment by presenting their corporate swags made with a specific color palette for that moment.
During this period of social isolation, even if events can be online, company culture can and must continue to be strengthened.
Swags are very good options for this because they fulfill an even more important function than corporate gifts, which is just to reinforce the company’s branding.
It’s also worth remembering that Hubspot, a digital marketing agency you’ve probably heard of, defines company culture as “the shared set of values, behaviors and shared vision of that workplace”.
Studies show that employees who work for companies with a cohesive company culture tend to be happier and, consequently, more productive.
As tight as your budget is, if you stop to think about it: happy employees are more productive. And the more productivity, the more your business grows and prospers. Isn’t the current goal precisely to make employees more productive and happy? If they are, how much more revenue can the company generate?
And swags play a very important role in helping to strengthen companies, even more so in this period of crisis.
Before telling you more about the applications of swags and how it is possible to automate this process of prototyping prints, production, storage and delivery, I’d like to talk about its financial viability.
It’s very likely that you’re asking yourself now: “Okay, these swags might be nice, but they must be pretty expensive and probably won’t fit my budget… Right?”
The best answer is: it depends. There are several ways to cheapen the value of corporate swags. It’s natural that the budget for 10 pieces may have a different value than the available budget.
However, if a potential schedule of actions is shared over a semester, for example, it’s SUPER possible to customize lots and reduce their value, making the cost-effectiveness of corporate swags much more attractive and justifiable.
What are the swag applications?
As we’ve already mentioned, they’re more than corporate gifts, because what they promote is more than just being an isolated item, a product that will soon be forgotten and discarded.
In fact, they’re something that will positively impact, if produced and delivered in the right way… Something with great potential to promote connection with the internal culture and genuine engagement.
In a competitive job market, personalized promotional items can set your company apart from the rest.
Whether it’s an image of employees on your company website, with custom clothing items,or corporate office products, the company’s own earnings can go a long way in portraying your company as a desirable place to work.
So, swags can be applied to custom clothing such as socks, hoodies and custom t-shirts; mugs, squeezes, covers, umbrellas, ecobags.
And why not?
Many of these items may seem to require large investments, but they can bring results both in the short and long term, in strengthening the values of your company culture beyond the office.
If they’re of good quality, they’ll be taken to social or personal occasions where the brand becomes more and more known.
Imagine an employee still using your company swag after 2 years? Or even after leaving the company, because he continues to identify with the company? ???
Corporate virtual shop with cool products for employees
Did you know that there’s also the possibility of creating a virtual shop for your company with cool productsso that employees can buy on demand themselves?
Now you may be asking yourself: “Okay, maybe these cool swags can be cost-effective. But are you saying that my employees would buy these pieces with their own pocket money?!?”
Would you believe me if I told you this is already happening, in real life? This is a paradigm shift happening in the market and we at Yoobe are already seeing it happen with our own eyes (AND IT’S SO BEAUTIFUL)! ❤️
We’re realizing that there’s a prioritization of companies that want to stay alive in the next 5-10 years by actively seeking to strengthen their organizational culture to the point where their own employees become brand ambassadors.
Instead of deciding to buy a new t-shirt at Renner or Zara, they choose to buy a cool swag from the company, which has great quality and often subtly enhances the brand and does not necessarily provide its wide-open logo as in traditional corporate gifts.
Also, about this one, did you know that there are softwares that allow the creation of a free or very low cost customized virtual shop? See how many new things there are in this world of corporate gifts! hehe
For that, you just enter, register your products and that’s it. Your corporate virtual shop is set up!
And these simple software don’t require programming adjustments on your end, this is the responsibility of the company that manages the software.
Even Yoobe provides the possibility for your company to create this virtual shop within our secure platform, using our developed technology.
Did you like this new way to help your company grow and promote culture among teams?
There are tools that automate the entire process
And in addition to the virtual shop being managed by software (as we said previously), today, there are tools that allow you to automate all steps of the process – from production, inventory generation, sale and delivery.
Have you ever imagined being able to:
- Create custom prints for your corporate promotional productswithout having to ask your company’s designer for help??
- Being able to have an on-demand stock of items without having to store inside the company in that old closet or warehouse? ??
- Being able to distribute corporate swags straight to employees’ homes during home office at a fair price????
Yes guys, it’s so exciting to say that that’s possible!
This platform also helps to take care of one of the most important parts of the process: the customization of products so that they’re truly unique and promote, in addition to culture, a sense of belonging and personalization.
Oh, and you can also customize how your online shop will look. This is something that’ll look like your company or it can also be something simpler and clean, with just the logo.
Benefits of Swags for your company
So, you can see how practical it is nowadays to produce swags and make them available to your stakeholders, either directly through internal campaigns or through the virtual shop like we said.
In addition to the advantages we’ve already listed here, it’s worth saying again (I promise it’s the last time ?) that swag isn’t just a corporate gift, but a powerful form of communication, engagement and culture transmission.
Through them, every HR, culture or internal marketing manager is able to publicly demonstrate that that culture is strong, that it reinforces this with all employees, promoting what matters, not just a facade, but a real official one.
Swags can also reward those who are helping the company the most to reach its goals and this will certainly work as a great motivator.
Finally, we finish this post. It was so exciting to talk about this topic!
We hope you enjoyed learning more about this concept that is still a trend in Brazil, but is already a reality in countries like the USA, as well as its applications and some news to help your company grow more and more in this challenging period.
Until the next post! And to know more about this subject. schedule a demo with our Yoobe Team.
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