Latest

This year’s Cisco Live! event at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas was a five-day paid conference featuring content-packed days and nightly networking opportunities.

On Sept. 11 and 12, recovery drink Code Blue returned to CollegeFest for a second year to reconnect with college students in the Boston area, a major market for the brand. The back-to-school event held at Boston’s Hynes Convention Center is organized by New York City-based youth marketing agency Mr. Youth, and attracts more than 15,000 students from nearly 100 New England-area schools with live performances, giveaways and prizes from more than 90 corporate sponsors.

To promote the Oct. 4 premiere of the new web series “Zombie Roadkill,” starring Thomas Haden Church, online network FEARnet is serving up undead treats at haunted houses in five markets as part of a partnership with the America Haunts network. The series is about college kids who get attacked by the reanimated corpses of recently killed roadside animals, and all does not go well.

Candy brand Tic Tac took advantage of the excitement surrounding the Emmy Awards on Aug. 30 to be the lead sponsor of a Luxury Gift Lounge at the SLS Beverly Hills Hotel two days prior to the show. Organized by Los Angeles-based GBK Productions, the gift lounge invited media and celebrities to interact with brands like Revitalash, MegaFood and Sega and learn more about participating charities.

It can be looked upon as a throwaway element, but if that’s your promotional product modus operandi, you are probably just throwing away your money. If handled properly, the stuff you give away can come back to you in the form of brand loyalty and ROI. But the promo industry is in flux, with new laws restricting giveaways and popular outcry against waste, and while going green might make you look good, it also might be less green than it is a red herring. With all this in mind, EM brings you its State of the Tchotchke report.