SEOh My F**cking God!

Top 10 Best Swag Giveaways From SES 2008

We all know that cruising the trade show floor is the best possible way to end up with exciting crap to give to our kids/spouse/dog/cousin/retarded nephew. Of course it will be forgotten or discarded withing the next 48 hours, but that doesn’t stop us from pretending to be interested in that booth’s product or service. “Hello! Yes, I’m Drew. Nice to meet you. Ooooh, you sell ad space on the moon? How interesting! Do you mind if I grab one of these snow globes from my retarded nephew? Thanks so much, and here’s my card.”

Here is the best of the god awful crap offered this year at SES.

10) Best Use Of Trying To Tie The Swag Into The Slogan: Acronym Media

I mean… you have to give them credit for trying. “Hands on search” is kind of clever. And as we all know, search marketing gets bacteria all over your hands. Those guys are creepy.

9) Best Shameless Exploitation Of Terrible Willpower

Like a bunch of assholes, Adgooroo served freshed-baked Otis Spunkmeyer cookies. Studies have shown that the human mind is incapable of resisting warm chocolate chip cookies. Next year they’re giving away piles of cocaine.

8) Worst Influence On All Of Us: Anchor Intelligence

Our moms would be disappointed in Anchor Intelligence. As if we’re all not going to stay up too late and get drunk and be hung over tomorrow morning. Thanks for feeding my habit, Anchor.

7) The Swag That Will Still Be In My Desk In 2014

Congrats to Business.com for handing out something that I’ll probably use. Oh… wait. I work for a technology company. So, um - never mind.

6) Best Swag That I’ll Give To My Aunt At Christmas

Commission Junction is pretty much the shadiest company ever. Of course, everyone involved in its creation is a millionaire. So what better swag to give away than a hundred dollar bill holder? That’s what is for, right?

5) Most Inappropriate Swag

Here’s the thing: SES attendees aren’t athletes (Not even ultimate frisbee athletes). The better choice would have been to label these things as Tron 2.0 Light Discs.

4) Ezanga.com’s Stress Frog

We all get stressed-out at trade shows. And we all hate frogs with the white hot burning intensity of a thousand suns. Take out your aggression on these sons of bitches. Good move, Ezanga. Thanks for facilitating my frog strangling fantasy.

3) The Totally Unfair Giveaway

A SmartCar? How are you going to beat that? If a dude wins this thing, I hope Omniture is able to track his success with women.

2) Best Consolation Swag

Aaaah, OK. So you’re probably not going to win the cool real-life SmartCar. So here is a tiny version of the real thing… to scale.

1) Best All-Around-We-Are-Not-Interested-In-Swag Giveaway

You have to respect somebody who just doesn’t give a shit. Some might say this is worse than pens, t-shirts, hats, keychains and buttons combined. I say this is the ultimate in simiplicity. Give your potential clients a ball. You can bounce it, you can squeeze it, you can throw it, you can stare at it. It’s the prototypical toy, and it’s awesome. Syndico, I’m not going to buy your service, whatever it is that you do, but I’m coming back to your booth next year and you and me are going to play some 4-square.

-Drew

Tags: Free Stuff, Giveaways, SES San Jose 2008, Swag, Top 10