Event Swag Program Experience

QuickBooks Connect is an annual event that brings together small businesses and accountants. Each year, we spent about $20 per attendee on swag. While these items have become an “expected” part of the experience, we felt that there was a general swag “fatigue” among attendees. There was also increasing discomfort on our part that we were not living up to Intuit’s sustainability commitment by continuing the practice of meaningless giveaways.

With the Connect Cash program, we saw an opportunity to bring our brand promise—Backing You—to life, by supporting Small Businesses while also giving value to our event’s swag program.

Instead of a predetermined item, each attendee was given a simple $5 branded canvas shopping bag (silkscreened onsite by a small business) and $15 worth of wooden tokens that they could spend as cash with any of the vendors at the event’s Small Biz Bazaar.

By doing this, we were:
(a) giving the attendees the ability to choose their own event souvenir (thus, something more meaningful for them)
(b) funneling money to the small businesses participating at the event’s Small Biz Bazaar,
(c) allowing attendees to forego “swag” altogether by donating their tokens to charities that we had chosen, and finally
d) tying our brand promise of “Backing You” to the QuickBooks Connect experience