The Power of Tchotchkes

No one who travels the trade show circuit could fail to notice the proliferation of tchotchkes—little toys, trinkets or knick-knacks bearing a company's name—being given away at exhibitor booths in recent months.

One technology supplier, Cambridge, Mass.-based PFN, a B2B communication service company, has come up with a trade show tchotchke—a blue-and-white, chain-link "Klixx" toy from World Class Promotions, which costs the company $1 apiece—to represent its flagship FirmLink product (see picture, bottom). "Getting people into your booth is half the battle at a trade show," says Lisa Philpott. PFN's director, marketing communications, and the Klixx toy sometimes does the trick. "They'd be heading past our booth and suddenly say, 'What is that? Hey, can I have two for my kids?' And we'd say, 'Sure, but first you have to listen to our pitch.' "

At the SupplyWebExchange show in Chicago in November, says Philpott, this strategy got PFN an introduction to the CTO of Dow Chemical—"a difficult person for us to get in front of." At the Commerce Chain Show in Boston, Klixx brought in prospects who ultimately agreed to run pilots with PFN.

PFN doesn't just keep its tchotchkes in its booth. Instead, it distributes them to other vendors' booths—even competitors—receiving their tchotchkes in exchange. "There's a whole underground trading network for tchotchkes," jokes Philpott. What this can result in, she wryly observes, is a competitor playing with Klixx, displaying the FirmLink name and Web site. "One guy even created a business card holder with it," she says. "You can't pay to have that happen."