After 30-plus years in the branded merchandise industry, there’s a question I still hear from marketing directors that should make every one of us uncomfortable:
“How do I know this stuff actually works?”
It’s not an unfair question. If we’re being honest with ourselves, the industry’s default answer has been some version of “Trust us, people love these.” We ship the order, send the invoice and move on. Maybe there’s a follow-up call a month later to check on quality.
But did the promotion do anything? Did it generate leads? Change behavior? Drive measurable engagement? Most of the time, nobody is tracking it. And worse, nobody’s even asking.
That must change. Every other marketing channel has figured out how to answer the ROI question:
- Digital advertisers report cost per click down to the penny.
- Event marketers track registrations, attendance and post-event conversions.
- Social media managers measure impressions, engagement rates and attribution.
Merch is competing for the same marketing dollars as all these channels. If we can’t speak the same language of accountability, then we’re going to keep getting treated as a budget line that’s easy to cut.
Change Your Approach
The shift starts before the order, not after it.
The first question in any client conversation shouldn’t be “What color?” or “How many?” It should be “What are you trying to accomplish?” Those are fundamentally different starting points, and they lead to different results. When you begin with the objective, you can build backward to the right activation and define what success looks like before a single item ships.
Seth Weiner, MAS
President/CEO, Sonic Promos
Maybe success is 50 qualified leads captured at a trade show. Maybe it’s a 20% increase in employee participation in a wellness initiative. Maybe it’s simply getting 200 people to stop at a booth instead of walking past it. The specific number matters less than the discipline of defining it. Because once you define success, you can measure it. And once you can measure it, you can prove your value in a language that every CFO and CMO understands.
Consider what’s possible even at the simplest level: A candy counting contest at a community event. Something so simple as a jar of candy and a modest prize can generate nearly 100 engaged contacts, each voluntarily providing their information for a chance to win. No expensive booth, no flashy technology, no significant budget.
Just a clear objective, a simple mechanic and a way to capture the data. That’s a cost per lead that’s well under a dollar. The point isn’t that every activation needs to be inexpensive. It’s that every activation needs to be tied to something measurable.
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When we approach it this way, we stop being the vendor who drops off boxes and start being the strategic partner who drives results. That’s a completely different value proposition. It’s also one that’s dramatically harder for a client to cut from the budget. The distributor who walks into a meeting with performance data earns a different level of trust entirely than the one who walks in with a catalog.
Supply The Data
There’s one more reason measurement matters that doesn’t get talked about enough.
If you’ve ever considered submitting a campaign for a PPAI Pyramid Award, data isn’t optional. It’s what separates a good entry from a winning one. Every Pyramid submission asks for results. The campaigns that rise to the top aren’t just creative; they’re backed by numbers that prove the investment delivered. You can’t win on execution alone. The judges want to know what it accomplished.
This industry is full of creative, resourceful professionals who genuinely care about their clients’ success. But caring isn’t a competitive advantage anymore. Not when every other channel is proving its value with dashboards and data.
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The distributors and suppliers who build measurement into every engagement are going to own the next decade. The ones who don’t are going to keep fighting over price. That’s a race to the bottom that nobody wins.
So, here’s a question worth sitting with:
The next time a client asks you to “just send some branded stuff for the event,” are you going to take the order or are you going to ask what outcome they’re actually trying to create? The answer to that question will say more about the future of your business than any product in your pipeline.
Weiner, MAS, is the president and CEO of Sonic Promos.
