Promotional Merchandise

There are times when units want to develop promotional items to celebrate a special event, such as an open house or anniversary; promote a new service; promote a new web site address; give away an item to key audiences during personal visits; give away an item to visitors at a trade fair, career fair, etc.

There are licensing and royalty issues involved with producing items that bear the university name or marks. All such items must be produced by a licensed vendor. The trademark licensing office maintains a list of licensed vendors at http://www.iastate.edu/~isurf/trade/trademark.html.

Designs created for you by the licensee will be submitted by the licensee to the trademark licensing office for approval.

To make the most of your investment in promotional giveaways you should

Determine your goal for the item

Do you want to use it to compliment other promotional communications used to build awareness?
Do you want to build traffic to your display at some event?
Do you want it to tie into a special event?
Do you want to use the item to reward your current students, alumni, donors, etc?

Determine how much you want to spend - how many impressions at what cost? Consider how many people will actually see the item. You don't want to develop something that goes in a closet or lies in a drawer. You want to maximize impressions by developing something that will be visible to many people.
Select an item that, ideally, is related to what we do or who we are. Let the car dealers give away key chains.
Make sure the give away item contains information for making contact with you – a telephone number, a web address, an e-mail address, or a phone number.

Here are some samples of unique promotional items created for Iowa State University and approximate costs.

Computer stress ball
Quantity: 1,000
Cost: $1.80 each

Post it cube
Quantity: 700
Cost: $6.95 each

Peanut stress ball
Quantity: 500
Cost: $1.69 each