Promotional products remain one of the most effective ways for brands to create lasting impressions, drive loyalty and build awareness. In 2025, the best-performing branded items combine usefulness, sustainability and daily visibility. Whether you’re looking to enhance customer relationships, boost employee engagement or generate buzz at events, these items top the list of what buyers truly value this year.

Too often we’ve seen a promotional product fall flat. Companies have set up at a tradeshow only to take home most of what they thought would be winners with attendees.

This happens for a lot of reasons; branding is not in a place that enhances the promotional product, there isn’t any choice for the customer or simply it’s the ‘wrong place at the wrong time’.

As a marketer with more than 30 years’ experience, I love swag!  I still have sitting on my desk a Call Design phone charger from a contact centre conference I went to a few years back, a DOMO drink bottle that is always filled with hot water monitoring how much I drink in a day and umbrella’s from every brand imaginable. I even have a stockpile of mints in my top drawer which are handier than you think.

Read the news online and you’ll realise there are many versions of the truth. It’s not just in navigating the world of current affairs that people find it hard to know what to believe or which version of reality is legitimate. In the new digital business world, consumers also find it increasingly tricky to sort truth from fiction and to gain trust in businesses. The recent rise of "fake news" has everyone pointing fingers at each other. So how in this new era, with cynicism increasing, can genuine business people reduce public doubt about internet marketing claims? How can brands give their customers confidence in their legitimacy?

Out of sight, out of mind — it’s an old saying, but it’s especially true about customer relations. We have all been given something with a logo on it, and we often use them every day. But how do you know that what you are doing with your marketing placement is working? How do you continue to ensure that your brand is at the forefront of a customer’s mind, and how do you stand out from the competition? Here we give you 10 good reasons why we believe that every marketing strategy can benefit from including promotional products as part of the overall campaign.

Being the end of the financial year, it is important for small businesses to leverage off the close of another financial year period.