Promotional Products Day – Update
A joint statement has now been released dealing fully with the proposed Promotional Products Day at the 51st PSI Show.
In order to underpin the power of promotional products as effective marketing instruments with data, the PSI suggested a controlled, guided market research study incorporating a few end customers at the 51st PSI Trade Show. This suggestion triggered controversy in the German and European promotional products industry. In some cases, obvious resistance to the plans of the PSI emerged. In the further course of the constructive exchange of opinion between PSI, BWL, bwg and EPPA the necessity of showing the industry the high communicative benefit of promotional products was emphasized, but the PSI trade fair was not considered to be the right platform for market research initiatives involving end customers. Measures to help the promotional products industry exploit additional sales potentials had yet to be developed, it was decided. It was made clear that, as always, only PSI member companies would take part in the PSI trade fair. The joint statement issued by the PSI and the german and european associations is worded as follows:
“The German associations of the promotional products industry, Eppa and PSI share the view that promotional products must be better positioned. There is agreement that, in order to achieve this, further initiatives emphasising the potential and the advertising effectiveness of promotional products are required. In this context further market research must be initiated in order to obtain additional reliable data and findings. Following an intensive exchange between the associations of the promotional products industry and PSI, a consensus was also reached that the leading trade show of the promotional products industry in January does not offer a suitable platform for the intended market research and that the visitor structure of the January event should remain unchanged. The intention is to devise suitable tools and platforms together in which end customers will also participate in order to achieve due significance and appreciation of promotional products.”
