The Hippo as a Marketing Device

If you look up SWAG in the dictionary (Okay, the online Urban Dictionary), it's interesting:

1. Promotional merchandise for a band, record label, or other entity in the music business, usually distributed at concerts.

The chief difference between swag and regular merchandise is that its purpose is not to make a profit, but to promote the band/label, and reward its supporters by giving them something cool and unique

2. Any corporate/branded merchandise given out for free in order to promote the company/brand. Usually little trinkets or doodads, sometimes clothing, and always cheaply mass-produced. Etymology of this term most likely stems from a middle-English use of the word 'swag' often in pirate circles or other criminal circles as a euphemism for loot or plunder. How anyone can really consider the modern day definition of swag as plunder or loot (since it's worthless) is beyond understanding.See also: schwag

(This is the one I'm referring to, but there are some other, fun ones:)

Acronyms
Scientific Wild Ass Guess (Yeah! one of my favorites)
Semantic Web Agreement Group (Zzzzzzzzzzzz)
Shock Wave Generator (where's the A?)
Silly Wild Ass(ed) Guess
Simulated Waste Access to Ground Water (huh?)
Sold Without A Guarantee (Like my Yugo)
Sophisticated Wild Ass Guess
Souvenirs, Wearables And Gifts
Standard Written Agreement (Blah blah blah lawyer talk)
Still Wondering and Guessing (Pass the bong, dude!)
Stolen While At Gig
Stuff We Acquired Gratis (This Reminds me of Abbie Hoffman's "Steal this Book" from 1970--I was born in 1970, so I'm remembering it from...well, whatever)
Stuff We All Get (Or: Stuff we ain't gettin')

So, here's the point:

I'm a sales rep, and sometimes I work at trade shows and we're given random stuff to give out to potential customers. This is serious business-I'm sure there are marketing meetings, long discussions, focus meetings, branding strategies, etc. that determine exactly what we end up handing out. This is done just so marketing people can actually stretch their dubious responsibilities to equal 40 hours in a week (just kidding--I respect you guys).

Here are past winners: posters, pens, mouse pads, key chains, badge holders ("We don't need no stinkin' badge holders"--a joke which came to mind all week--from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre--which most people had heard but haven't seen the movie...).

Then we got into the "squeezy" stage (don't let your mind wander too much here)--like stress balls--these just sit on your desk and gather dust and look pretty (?). Seemingly random, sometimes there reason behind the insanity--for a couple of years we gave out "squeezy fish", but there was a clever underlying joke--a technique that a lot of our customer base uses is called FISH (an acronym for Fluorescent in-situ Hybridization)--so there was a little something to it...at least serious thought could be claimed, if necessary.

Then we come to last year--we were handed bags of "squeezy hippos". And, like a group of failed faith seekers, we all searched for meaning...and found none.

Among my colleagues, there are some of us who are in awe that some people make their living by trying to analyze the collective thoughts of thousands of strangers (aka potential customers) the trends in what is appealing, deciphering mass-media eccentricities, and then, in turn, interpret our engineering gobblety-goo into something appealing, trying to hit a mark at some point in future that represents the convergence of product releases and media cycles (this is my definition of marketing). So, my colleagues and I assumed the existence of and looked for the well thought-out logic in all marketing decisions. When the squeezy-hippo was released, we were flooded with the single question "Why a hippo?" from many of the happy recipients (I'm convinced that you could give pretty much anything away at the meeting and they would still be happy to take it at the time, then get home and say "huh?") Since the national marketing manager happened to be at the meeting, we tracked him down on the streets of San Francisco and asked him across the crosswalk what was the significance of the hippo is to our product--he just shrugged his shoulders and said "I dunno--they just kinda seemed cool..."

We were disappointed. Utterly so.

Stay tuned, I'm doing a little marketing research and my full report is forthcoming on why the hippo was an excellent choice to represent us to our customers...