Are Promotional Flash Drives Set to Dominate The Marketing World?

We've all got one. Usually sitting by the phone, tucked away in a drawer or in the

glove box in the car. They usually come from banks, charities or insurance companies

and they are great to have around when you need to write down a phone number or an

address. Promotional pens have slowly taken over the promotional market and are now so

successful that there's barely a home in the country that doesn't have a branded pen

sitting by the phone.



For years they have dominated the marketing world and been used to enhance marketing

campaigns and increase brand awareness for a countless number of businesses. For the

last two decades their dominance has been unrivalled and because of their affordability

and practicality nobody thought that was ever going to be challenged…until now.



Originally just an executive item that was expensive to own and flashy to be seen with,

the memory stick came into a marketplace that was at the time dominated by a small,

chunky lump of plastic. If you wanted to carry your reports and spreadsheets around

with you and open them at another computer, you had only one option, the floppy drive.

If you wanted to carry music around with you, that would be a job for CDs. Flash drives

were initially such a leap in technology that they were expensive items that could not

be afforded by everyone and not even be considered for all but the most lavish of

promotional items.



Times change and most importantly, technology evolves. With every year that passed the

memory capacity of flash drives sky rocketed and as a result the prices started to

tumble on the smaller memory sizes. Although small in comparison to what is possible

with the technology, these smaller sized flash drives were more than capable of holding

entire music collections and storing everything from movies to essays. With the prices

now coming down, everybody could afford them and their popularity shot up.



The technology doesn't stop advancing though and now the standard sized flash drive of

around 1-2GB is extremely affordable and that is what is attracting companies to use

these in their tens of thousands as branded items to market their business.



The huge advantage of flash drives is their practicality and this makes them extremely

popular as a promotional item. A product that is practical is one that is going to be

frequently used and with this frequent use comes plenty of visibility for the logo on

the USB drive. Not only does this enforce the company name into the mind of the user,

it also acts as an advert for anybody who happens to notice the flash drive in use.



There are also brand image benefits to be gained by putting a logo onto a flash drive.

They are still a relatively new technology and so any company using them for promotions

will be seen as a forward thinking, modern business.



It is for all of these reasons that the pen became so popular as a promotional item. It

was practical with plenty of room for branding and it gave off a good brand image. With

the prices of memory falling all of the time and businesses quick to realise the

potential of using branded flash drives to market themselves, it is only a matter of

time before every home and office in the land has a promotional flash drive by the

computer.