{"id":251,"date":"2005-08-17T11:22:46","date_gmt":"2005-08-17T19:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/songoose.com\/?p=58"},"modified":"2025-07-22T18:37:59","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T18:37:59","slug":"the-joy-of-schwag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/?p=251","title":{"rendered":"The Joy of Schwag"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>I worked my college summers as a Marlboro Gear Van Representative. My job was to give people <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Promotional_item\">schwag<\/a> after they bought cigarettes and to survey them in the process. What a motherlode of schwag it was, my friends. I still have towels, denim shirts, keychains, umbrellas, sunglass pouches, the works. When I was an exchange student in England I actually sold several &#8220;rare&#8221; Marlboro Zippos that I had acquired while working &#8220;the Van.&#8221; The English were way behind on schwag.<\/li>\n<li>At Christmas, our family likes to gift each other schwag. I have some awesome golf shirts embroidered with various mutual fund logos and I wear them proudly. I do not believe that my brother owns a single golf ball that is not emblazoned with some 3rd party logo.<\/li>\n<li>I used to have schwag giveways at my summer parties. I&#8217;d collect as much schwag as I could throughout the year than have an absurd drawing toward the end of the party and give it all away. One year I gave a 7&#8242; (2m) inflatable red-white-and-blue Budweiser rocket (that looked a lot like a penis) to this crazy geek kid that was a busboy where I worked. He was thrilled and every time I saw him he mentioned that gigantic rocket. That is the power of schwag.<\/li>\n<li>I worked for Apple one summer as an in-store representative at Circuit City. The job sucked pretty bad but they had these awesome pens and I also got a &#8220;Think Different&#8221; watch that ran backwards.<\/li>\n<li>Getting married generates a lot of schwag. Various businesses such as caterers, DJ&#8217;s and florists are eager to press their schwag firmly into the palm of your hand. Accept this token. Unfortunately, the token is too often a spoon with a Hershey&#8217;s Kiss tied to it with ribbon or a miniature bubble-blowing toy. But, one of the finest wedding schwags is the food. Taste away, my friend, taste away.<\/li>\n<li>After I graduated from &#8220;the Van&#8221; and entered the big time as a Territory Sales Manager for Phillip Morris, my entire concept of schwag was redefined forever. PM meetings were virtual schwagfests &#8211; I recall once they actually set up a faux casino in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jeffersonhotel.com\/\">the hotel<\/a>  for everyone to play with tickets to win schwag, <strong>then, they gave away a lot more schwag<\/strong>. <em>After<\/em> the casino prizes came a leather jacket, hikers (in my size), oxford shirts, umbrellas and duffle bags for the guys and purses for the girls. I still have the leather jacket &#8211; it has a bright-blue satin lining with &#8220;You&#8217;ve Got Merit!&#8221; embossed in the fabric. It always makes me feel better when I read that lining; both because of the affirmation and because it&#8217;s schwag.<\/li>\n<p>Tell the world about your Joy of Schwag. Shout it from the rooftops &#8230; or the comments area.<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I worked my college summers as a Marlboro Gear Van Representative. My job was to give people schwag after they bought cigarettes and to survey them in the process. What a motherlode of schwag it was, my friends. I still have towels, denim shirts, keychains, umbrellas, sunglass pouches, the works. When I was an exchange [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":576,"href":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.mikemadaio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}