US Promotional Product Sales at a High

Sales of promotional products - useful, often cheap things that bear a company logo like that mug on your desk - reached an all-time high of more than $18 billion last year, according to Promotional Products Association International. They were up 4 percent, the association said, while TNS Media Intelligence reported that other forms of advertising spending rose 3 percent.

Promotional products are popular, industry leaders say, because the best of them stick around for months, subtly burning a brand name into a user’s brain. (One literally burns a brand name into toast.) Others are more short-lived, but amusing or crass enough to be memorable. And, of course, as some in the industry concede, some of the products are "cheap plastic stuff" that immediately gets lost in the children’s toy bin.

Last month, about 2,500 distributors - the people who sell promotional products to the companies that put their logos on them - roamed the aisles of Philadelphia’s Convention Center trying to separate the keepers from the future rejects.