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The Promotional Idea Showcase - Fall 2000 - Updated
Quarterly
Write Will
Never Steer You Wrong
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Open your desk drawer. We’ll wait.
Among the other stuff in there, it’s full of logoed pens and pencils, isn’t it?
More than you’ll likely need for the next decade. Many aren’t all that special,
either, right? But whenever you got each one, you kept it; after all, it was a pen. Or
pencil. Or rollerball. Or marker.
And that’s the point.
Our cover story discusses writing instruments, the second-most popular promotional product
category on the planet. Know why? Believe it or not, it isn’t mainly because they’re
imprinted.
When a Cro-Magnon first dragged a branch in the dirt; when, at some point B.C., a Chinese
scribe made a small brush; when, a little later, an Egyptian scholar dipped a dried reed
in ink; when a Babylonian merchant carved cuneiform on wet clay with a sharp stick; when a
creative Roman fashioned the first lead plumbum; when a sixth-century monk first cut a
goose feather at an angle; when John Mitchell created the metal-nib pen in 1828 and James
Perry the flexible steel nib two years later; when Lewis Waterman introduced the fountain
pen in 1884; and when the ballpoint was perfected by Lazlo Biro in the late 1930s, do you
really think any of them were thinking about the advertising potential of their
inventions?
No way. All they wanted was an easier way to put words on a surface. A writing instrument’s
main purpose in life is to write. Theoretically, if it doesn’t do its job, it’s
gone, right? You wouldn’t keep a coffee mug that leaked.
But that’s where theory and fact diverge in one of those peculiar contradictory
amalgams. With writing instruments, advertising and utility have an odd symbiosis not
found in many other specialties. Why? The essentials are outlined in the article.
But here are a few points about them you may not have considered so readily:
- A surprising number of folks get weird about pens/pencils; they may use a lot of
different ones, but develop personal favorites they keep returning to like homing pigeons.
What makes a favorite a favorite? Who knows? But it could be your pen that scores.
- Everyone needs an emergency back-up when their Palm Pilot’s batteries run out
unexpectedly. Never saw that one coming, did ya?
- People steal them. You know it’s true; from hotels, restaurants, stores, even
offices. Why do you think banks chain them to the counter? Try to put those with your logo
in places where they’ll be “permanently borrowed.”
- Unless you routinely carry wet clay, dried reeds or geese around with you, it’s
damn near impossible to write without one.
- Finally, what some pinstriped Nostradamus wannabes say will ultimately kill writing by
hand – the big bad computer and its sidekick, the evil Dr. Internet – is a
virtual (no pun intended) mega-warehouse of writing-instrument information. In 10 minutes
of casual searching, we found enough stuff to fill a year’s worth of Imprint. Classic
old pen ads? They’re out there. Hugely detailed histories? Out there. Technological
aspects? There. The latest on vintage writing instruments (a red-hot collecting area right
now, incidentally)? There. Everything you ever wanted to know about fountain pens? Uh-huh.
How to find out if you’re a bona fide Pen Geek? Yep. How cedar woodcased pencils are
made? Yep again. Wait – how about a “Writing Through the Ages” timeline
where you can click on various points of a pen for details? Tip: Don’t bet against
it.
You can run, but you can’t hide. And why should you? Writing instruments are
everywhere. Always have been and always will be, computers or no.
Just like promotional products in general.
PS. Remember, your comments, criticisms and suggestions are always welcome. |
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This online version of IMPRINT MAGAZINE is updated regularly along with the printed
version.
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