It's in the (conference) bag

Are conference bags still relevant as promotional vehicles for event sponsors?

It doesn’t seem so based on the contents of a bag that was given to delegates of the BusinessWorld Economic Forum held last July 12, 2016 at the Shangri-La at the Fort in Taguig City.

Only a handful of sponsors had promotional materials or items inside the bag. It was pretty dismal, particularly since the only items inside the bag about the economic forum was a half-fold program and the delegate’s I.D.

Do event sponsors still consider the conference
bag a promotional vehicle for their companies
and/or products and services?

Plainly speaking, the bag comes nowhere near the prestige of the event. Speakers topbilled by Manuel V. Pangilinan who heads the MVP Group of Companies, Vice President Leni Robredo and Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III tackled the topics of succession, integration, disruption and capacity – with the aim of understanding, predicting and influencing the country’s business and economic growth, particularly in light of forthcoming changes under the Duterte administration.

I could not understand it. It must have cost thousands, maybe even millions of pesos for the major sponsors, to support the event. The seats did not come cheap: some P8,000 for the early birds to P12,000 for walk-ins.

Yet very few of these sponsors, from the partners down to the donors, had included anything about their companies and/or their products and services in the conference bag.

This leads me to think that these companies may feel that the print and online advertising of the event is enough mileage. Maybe the conference bag as a promotional vehicle is passé, never mind if it’s free, additional advertising and part of the benefits of sponsorship.

I wonder if these businessmen, who regularly attend such events, even bother to look at the bag’s contents anymore. So I ask my husband, who attended the event, if I could dispose of the contents and just recycle the bag.

“Did you see the ang pao (red envelope) from PNB? What a nice idea, no?” he replies. I agree. PNB had included several brochures about its services as well as a packet of red and gold money envelopes which could be used for giving money gifts during Christmas.

He hurried into the room and reached into the bag, taking the magazine from Lucerne, one of the silver sponsors. “I am going to read this,” he grins at me. “You just want to look at the expensive watches,” I shoot back.

We will not switch banks over money envelopes, but we will involuntarily promote the bank when we use them for Christmas. As for the watches, I am keeping my fingers crossed that my husband, who loves watches, will content himself with looking at them on a magazine.

Already, two companies have made their presence felt via the bag so I am convinced that the economic forum sponsors passed up an opportunity to maximize their investment by including something as simple as a brochure about themselves and their products in the bag.  It was either that, or the conference bag’s lack of substance could be traced to an oversight by the event partner.