Corporate Gift Diversity to Continue

Dean Hammond, an account manager for Indianapolis-based Norwood Promotional Products, sells one of the old standbys: calendars. Norwood produces the Playboy calendar and the Son of God calendar. What better advertising than something someone looks at every day? Hammond calls it "timed-release marketing."

For trendier buyers, there were real roses with logos imprinted on their petals. The flowers, produced by Speaking Roses International, of Salt Lake City, come in white, pink, red and yellow for $69.95 a dozen.

Jay Butera, president of Spring Mill Home Products in Gladwyne, used a microphone to grab attention for his product: a device that pops the seal on jars. It has been available in retail stores for a decade, but entered the promotional-products market three years ago. "It's the world's easiest jar opener," Butera said with a carnival barker's zest. "It's a very effective promotional product... because people will keep it for years and see that logo every day when they use it."

One of the latest things is a toaster that imprints a logo on the bread, the sort of thing a hotel might love. "The promotional product is actually the bread," Andrews said.

The competition included flip-flops with parts of the soles cut out so wearers leave branded footprints. And a sock-puppet frog that croaks children's songs. Then there's the logo bean, a bean seed with a logo pressed into both sides. Its leaves emerge with the logo printed on them. We'll have to take Andrews' word on that. The plants didn't make it to this fair.

Distributors, cell phones to their ears, looked for the best buy on specific items, while keeping an eye out for the latest great idea.

Alan Pestcoe, of Holland, Bucks County, said it was the "standards" such as pens, coffee mugs, and Post-it notes that stayed on people's desks. "I find that the hot item in January is the close-out item in December," he said.

Kate Rodgers and JoDee Russell were there to check out the quality of catalog merchandise and logo imprinting for their employer, Office Depot.

It is fun to see the new stuff, Rodgers said, but most of the show is really about new ways of packaging the old stuff. She was impressed, for example, with ASI's name-tag apparatus. A tube of lip balm, enclosed in a little fabric tube, was hooked to the lanyard.

"Each year, a million people give out lip balm," she said. "You have to find ways to make the lip balm more interesting than it was yesterday."