The room was full of booths, populated by creative, friendly (if somewhat aggressive) and energetic souls ready, willing and able to change the life of the student visiting their table. (I know, this sounds like a story from a decade ago, thanks COVID, but it was just a little less than a year ago.)
In the fight for young talent, a well-attended job fair has the feel of a boxing title match. Each camp has trained for their chance in the ring, and their preparation and differing approaches are on full display for those of us as interested in the job fair itself as the potential talent. Sure, we were seeking to fill 2 spots, but our spots were for course credit equivalent internships, not paying jobs with benefits. Given the quality and name recognition among the participants in the room, I knew I would have to deploy a unique strategy to gain attention. I spent the hour prior to the fair opening walking the room, taking in the varied ways businesses use promotional marketing items as part of their engagement strategy with interested candidates, the number of people assigned to the booth, how they arranged the furniture, etc.
While I’m a 15+ year industry-veteran, our business at that point was a scant 9 months old, so we didn’t have much in the way of resources to present ourselves in a manner consistent with our brand and the industry we represent, but as is always the case, with constraint comes creativity. The result is found in the picture below.
As I awaited interested parties, I stood on the aisle side of the table, just out of the frame to the right.
My pitch was as follows:
“Hi! This might seem like an unusual way to get your attention, and I admit I don’t have enough pens to keep this going for the whole day, but these are very important pens, and the story behind them has a lot to do with why you might want to intern for us.
At Social Good Promotions, we sell products from partners that have some defensible strategy to make the world a better place. It’s so important to us, we go out of our way to learn all about the people we work with, including the causes they support, the ways they’re trying to be kinder to the environment and how they’re giving people from underserved backgrounds chances to get ahead in life. So, when it comes to these pens, we’re excited to give them away because that means we can buy more pens, which is awesome because for every box of pens we buy, the company gives away a box to a school that’s in need of writing instruments! I’m sure you can guess when our customers ask us for pens, which pens are we trying to convince them to buy?
What do you think of that?
Let me do this. Take a few pens, and when you go home tonight and empty out your tote bag and look at the things you picked up here today, if my pen stands out to you as being something memorable and interesting, then maybe, just maybe, you might want to give some consideration to talking to me again.”
In the initial interview I had with our intern Katey last year, she told me point-blank that ours was the ONLY brand that stuck out in her mind that night, and she was over the moon happy to join us for the winter semester last year.
When you attach the meaning behind your product selections, you increase the opportunity to create a positive mental correlation to your brand in the way we were able to do at that job fair. This should ALWAYS be the primary objective behind the sale and use of our medium, and I challenge us all to continue to sharpen the axe in the exercise of adding value to the brands our customers bring to us. Make these connections on behalf of your clients and watch your revenue and goodwill soar.
Roger has spent 20+ years making complex concepts more understandable for both buyers and sellers alike, and has devoted the majority of his recent career to injecting purpose via philanthropy to his sales and marketing efforts. He’s intent on making the world a better place and his nirvana exists at the intersection of Mission, Passion, Profession and Vocation. He loves the outdoors and seeks memorable experiences whenever possible. Contact Roger at roger@socialgoodpromotions.com or 810-986-5369.