What Does Your Pen Say About You?

A large part of choosing the correct promotional product is to do with knowing your target audience and catering to what they might actually find useful or interesting. As such, it is worth investing time not only deciding which product you are going to put your logo on, but also on which type of the chosen product would be most effective. In the case of pens, for example; no classy company is going to be impressed by a clear plastic tube with your slogan on the side. A free, gold-nibbed fountain pen, on the other hand, will wow your clients but consume your budget like a biscotti. The key is compromise and understanding; famous promotions-guru Sun Tzu had the right idea, I quote;

“Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories” (Sun Tzu, The Art of War, roughly 600 BC)

Obviously Sun Tzu was Chinese and, though my linguistic skills aren’t perfect, I can loosely translate this into English as meaning “Know thy product, know thy target-audience. A thousand clever items, a thousand new clients”

The poignancy of this statement is undeniable and, in tribute to Sun Tzu, I shall further expand on this key feature of promotions with regards pens, in order to help you decide the correct kind of promotional pen to give away to your specific target audience. I begin;

From the schoolboy boldly using the writing-end of an ink eraser in the confidence that he won’t make a mistake, to the businessman carrying a golden fountain pen in his top pocket that he will never use; pens have a strange way of accompanying us throughout the journey of life. But what does your choice in pen say about you?

What do you consider somebody’s pen says about their personality? Nothing? You’re probably write, but in classic pseudo-psychology style (or “meta-pseudo-science” as physicists may snidely refer to it), I am going to go ahead and do some personality analyses regarding a person’s choice in pens. Am I am psychologist? No. Am I a pen expert? No. Do pen experts event exist? In the modern world this is a ridiculous enquiry; of course they do. A better question might be why do pen experts exist? However, this is the kind querying that is likely to provide more questions than answers and, despite my Socratic nature, I am going to spurn it in favour it in favour of simplicity; pen experts do exist, I have no idea why and I am definitely not one. However, I have done enough writing in my time to know my rollerballs from my ballpoints and hence I feel qualified in casting judgment upon all writing implements. I shall start in the next post...on biros.