Today I ordered t-shirts imprinted with our company logo and slogan to be given away at a conference our team members are going to attend, and began wondering just where this schwag idea originated. And what does schwag mean any way?
Evidentially it could have began as early as medieval times, when armor makers gave out free, wooden pegs engraved with their names, so customers could hang up their metal suits when they were done fighting for the day.
I kept looking, and in the January 2001 issue of Wired Magazine, I found the following:
1880s William Wrigley Jr. hands out gum to promote his Wrigley’s Scouring Soap. The public responds: Screw the soap; just give us the gum.
1889 Ohio newspaperman Jasper Meek figures out how to use his printing presses to stamp words onto burlap. He puts local store names on bookbags; merchants buy them to give away. America’s first schwag bag is born.
1890s Henry Beach, Meek’s journalistic rival, decides to get even. He uses his printing presses to stamp letters on strips of wood, creating the first great piece of schwag: the imprinted flyswatter handle.
The examples from Wired continued until I found my favorite.
1977 Apple Computer gives out T-shirts; they become instant collector’s items. People will collect OpenMethods t-shirts too. I just know it.
From the internet, I was able to determine that the term schwag refers to all the different logo-imprinted stuff given away by companies to get people to remember them, feel good about them, have their phone number and website at hand and generally make them think about them before any of their competitors. Studies have been conducted, and it works. Of course it does. I bought t-shirts, didn’t I?
Further research showed that the original spelling is “swag” (for Stuff We All Get). I wondered about the spelling difference and found one site that explained “schwag is what the coolest of the cool people say”. I also found out if the give-away item is really good it is called “schwag” and if it is forgettable then it is just “swag”. Our shirts are definitely of the “schwag” variety.
I thought I would just look to see what types of new items we might offer besides t-shirts, even though ours are great. I found things like chapstick holders, and some sort of oval click magnets - that I am sure Trip would find extremely annoying, and something I think would be a real hit in our office - nerf-like dart guns. Yes, I think our new schwag should definitely be dart guns.
