Whats on Your Desk?

Here is quite an amusing little exercise that will help you fill a few idle minutes one afternoon. The best time would be just before the lunch break or close of play when you have completed the day’s tasks and can’t be bothered starting any more.

All you have to do is list the number of items on your desk or in your immediate vicinity that are branded promotional products that you have picked up at an exhibition or you have been sent as a little gift from a potential supplier.

Here’s my list:

Good quality ball point pen. Exhibition dates, location and timing printed on the side.

Plain white paper notepad with a conference venue’s logo across the top and contact details along the bottom.

Plain white paper notepad with a conference venue’s logo and contact details on the glossy front cover.

Set of wind up false teeth. Given by a venue which at the moment ‘has a lot to talk about’. Quite a well thought through campaign.

Mouse mat advertising a couple of sister hotels recently opened in London’s docklands.

Post-It note pad branded by a certain transport company.

Mug that features the logo of an exhibition contracting company.

Pencil eraser with the name of the stationery supplier along the side.

Another pencil eraser with the name of another stationer along the side.

Ruler with the name of a venue finding service along the top.

Model bus with the name of a venue group along its side

Calendar supplied by a promotional clothing company.

Pencils with various company names on the side.

That’s 13 items but the story doesn’t end there. Just about everything else on my desk is branded too. Here we go again:

Computer monitor

Computer printer

Two speakers

Computer

Phone

Mobile phone

Modem

Point where cable enters house

Various stationery items such as glue and diary

Even my glasses case has the name and logo of the optician on it

This brings the grand total of branded and ‘logoed’ items on and around my desk to nearly 25 and I must point out that we’re not talking about a huge sprawling space.

I am being bombarded by information overload. At the beginning of this inventory I genuinely didn’t think it would reach such an amount. Now here’s the interesting bit. Once you have made your list, don’t think about it for five minutes and then try to remember everything, you’ll be surprised how little you have absorbed. Better still, list everything by memory at the start of the exercise and you’ll realise how little you know about what goes on in front of you every day. You’ll be interested in which items you remember and those that, although right in front of you, simply don’t register at all.

With all this branding going on before my very eyes it seems to make total sense for companies to come up with ever more subtle and considered ways of drawing peoples’ attention. As we know, it can be done, after all, that’s what advertising is all about.

However, the fact still remains that we live in a world in which our senses are bludgeoned on a second by second basis by companies eager to sell us stuff that will make our lives worthwhile. As a user of promotional merchandise you are one of them.

My desk probably has nothing to do with any of this really, but in many ways it is totally emblematic of what you are facing.

I have 25 branded products already on my desk – what are you going to do to make sure your product stands out ahead of all the others?

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