Over the past several weeks, we’ve been exploring recent trends that are influencing how businesses are spending their marketing budgets these days, first introduced in a blog post on the PPAI Expo back in January. Those trends include an industry-wide move towards more conscious consumerism as well as a growing preference for buying promotional items based on well-known retail brands.

A recent blog post highlighted various trends that are influencing how businesses are currently spending their budgets.

We detailed one of those trends, conscious consumerism, in late February. With this post, we are examining a second: a preference by customers for well-known retail brands when it comes to branded promotional items.

In a recent blog post, we reported that several trends are currently influencing how businesses are spending their budgets, driven largely by the combined goals of cost efficiency and social consciousness.

PPAI Expo 2023, held in early January in Las Vegas, attracted the country’s biggest promotional product providers and distributors to showcase what’s in store for the coming year—everything from new products and apparel to event material and order programs.

As with the previous few years, 2023 includes a host of uncertainties that will impact this year’s buying habits. Post-pandemic behavior continues to influence decision making, forcing companies to be cautious about spending. Couple that with an increasingly fragile economy and it’s clear that budgets will suffer.

During the pandemic, everyone had to find a way to keep your employees and customers engaged in new and creative ways. At-home marketing campaigns and events became the new tradeshows and meetings, and small giveaways turned into home-delivered corporate gifts.

While some of these trends did start to fade as the world started to open up, a few did stick around and are predicted to become the new regular for promotional buying. One of the trends that seems to be enjoyed by everyone is the end of the day happy hour with coworkers