Coolest Peer Pressure Sometimes the best way to drive impact is to put your peers on notice. At The PPAI Expo 2026, Reciprocity Road donated $7,500 to the Promotional Products Education Foundation, then threw down the gauntlet and challenged other buying groups to match or exceed it. The result wasn’t awkward silence; it was momentum. These kinds of public, do-gooder challenges tap into the industry’s competitive streak for the better, proving that collaboration doesn’t have to be quiet to be effective. Coolest Group Project That Needs Your Help For years, merch companies have marketed themselves in isolation. We have thousands of voices with thousands of slightly different pitches. PPAI’s upcoming global marketing campaign flips that script by championing unified messaging – selling the value of merch as a medium, not just individual companies. Think “Got Milk?” for branded merchandise. When an entire industry rallies behind a single story, the volume and impact will be impossible to ignore. Coolest Way To Put The I In PPAI For decades, PPAI’s cornerstone research focused on U.S. distributor sales, a necessary foundation, but no longer sufficient. In recent years, that lens has widened to include Canada and France. A recent carbon efficiency study, launched in collaboration with ASI and European partners, was created to measure merch across multiple continents. And this spring, PPAI will launch its most ambitious research yet, a global economic impact study conducted in partnership with Oxford Economics. The business isn’t just local or national anymore. We’re worldwide, and we’re acting like it. Coolest Math Problem Ask a media buyer about ROI and you’ll get numbers in seconds. Ask about merch, and historically the answer’s been more vibes than hard numbers. That’s changing. Do your buyer a favor and calculate real metrics like cost per thousand impressions. No surprise, merch performs exceptionally well. A digital ad might cost $20-$30 CPM. A great piece of merch worn dozens of times and seen by hundreds of people can land closer to $2-$5 CPM over its lifetime. We’ve got scale. What’s cool is our ability to prove it. Coolest Way To Be A Good Neighbor Regional associations have always been the industry’s grassroots engine, and they need support more than ever. Volunteering time, talent or leadership locally strengthens the entire ecosystem, and now that involvement also earns your company additional consideration for PPAI 100. It’s a reminder that the health of the national and international industry starts with engagement in your own backyard. Volunteering time, talent or leadership locally … earns your company additional consideration for PPAI 100. sasirin pamai / vectortank88 / Shutterstock.com PPAI • APRIL 2026 • 39 The Coolest Stuff in Merch | Must Read
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzU4OQ==