PPB September 2018

College students today are surrounded by promotional products where they live, work and play. Study results found that 85 percent of AMA student members own university-branded products that were given to them for free, the majority (72 percent) describing these products as “swag.” The term today remains highly controversial within the industry, with some industry professionals embracing the word and others condemning it. While some may associate swag with the acronym “stuff we all get,” the term has a much different connotation for the future generation of marketers. In its most recent update, The Oxford English Dictionary defines swag as “bold self-assurance in style or manner; an air of great self-confidence or superiority.” The changing contexts of the term are key to understanding how contemporary society views swag’s new value orientation. As consumers first, the student perception of swag portrays their university-branded belongings as part of their persona. Yet, Charity Gibson from supplier company Peerless Umbrella Co. says, “With so many battles to fight, the terminology we use to classify what we do should be the last thing on our minds.” See sidebar for the full historical context of swag. The study found that one ongoing battle for the industry is the misconception of promotional products as “a pretty trivial little piece of marketing,” as one full-time professor put it. Though 90 percent of marketing faculty say they consider promotional products a form of advertising and 79 percent of educators say promotional products are recognized in marketing courses at their institutions, the attention paid to this medium is minimal. One full-time professor said, “As a percentage of a course that deals with introduction to marketing, [promotional products] represent a small percentage of the content, possibly 15 minutes out of a semester-long course.” Courses most likely to integrate promotional products in their curriculum, although in limited context, are introductory classes, such as Principles of Marketing (58 percent), Advertising and Promotions (58 percent) and Integrated Marketing Communications (52 percent). As an adjunct professor said, “When I taught full-time, promotional materials were discussed in the Principles of Marketing foundational course, as well as in the advertising course. However, promotional products do not expressly fit the definition of advertising.” The majority suggested that course content naturally built promotional products into discussion but used it strictly as an example before moving on to the next topic (Figure 2). 1300s The Merriam-Webster Dictionary traces one of swag’s many meanings to ‘loot,’ a term that describes stolen goods, while ‘modern swag’ refers to items “not stolen but given freely.” Early 2000s The latest resurgence of swag can be attributed to an abbreviation for swagger suited to the ethos of hip-hop. The Oxford English Dictionary’s cites the track “December 4th” on Jay-Z’s 2003 The Black Album as the first use of swag in this context. Around this timeframe, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hired Distinctive Assets, an agency that described itself as a “niche marketing company offering celebrity placement, product introduction and branding opportunities within the entertainment industry,” and that popularized ‘swag bags’ as “everyone wins gift bags.” In 2016, these bags stole headlines for being valued at a record $230,000 per bag, containing products from more than 50 companies. 2011 An article in The New Yorker described swag as a “noun, an adjective, a verb and an all-purpose expression of agreement or endorsement” in 2011. Later that year, the National Public Radio (NPR) flagship news program, “All Things Considered,” named swag the Hip-Hop Word of the Year. 2015 Swag joined the archive of more than 800 entries created in the Lake Superior State University’s 40th annual list of “Words To Be Banished For Misuse, Overuse And Uselessness.” Today In June, the Oxford English Dictionary included swag with the more than 1,000 words in its most recent update. “Though apparently long disavowed, it seems as though swag is here to stay,” according to an OxfordWords blog post. FEATURE | 2018 Higher Education Study The Evolution Of SWAG “ Swag has a long and diverse history, and the way the word is used continues to shift and change today.” - Oxford English Dictionary 88 | SEPTEMBER 2018 |