Beratung Swag

Fans of Our Brand

If you have ever flown to Pittsburgh from another airport, you will notice something at your gate. At least one person (and typically a lot more than one) is wearing some form of Pittsburgh sports apparel. It may be a Steelers jersey, a Penguins hat, or a Pirates t-shirt but rest assured, you will see some black and gold.

If you have noticed this, you may have asked yourself why. I think the answer is simple. In Pittsburgh, we are fanatical about our sports teams. It’s part of our DNA, of who we are and our shared culture together. We take pride in our teams and in the shared love of our teams. We even proudly proclaim ourselves as the City of Champions.

At Beratung, we are fanatical about our brand. Just like fans (short for fanatics) of teams wear their favorite team’s logo to proudly proclaim their allegiance. Just like fans speak about the decisions their teams make with pronouns such as “us” and “we.” Just like knowing you have arrived at a gate that is destined for Pittsburgh, we want people to know they are around Beratung clients and team members when we congregate.

We have a term for this part of our culture at Beratung, “Always Be Branding” (ABB). We are proud of our logo and our name. You will often see our team members wearing something that has our logo on it or carrying something that has our logo on it just about any time you see one of us. Typically, each team member might have several logos on them. 

Our Logo Tells Our Story

Why is our logo and name so important to us? It is just a lighthouse, right?

For us, our logo is more than just a picture or just a lighthouse. Our logo and our name tell our brand’s story.

We are a firm that believes we are financial planners that also provide investment management for clients that need that service, not investment managers that provide financial plans when clients want that service. To us, our lighthouse represents financial planning and the importance of planning and therefore, our belief system.  In addition to financial planning, we believe our logo embodies our core values, our mission, and our vision.

As a lighthouse guides ships through uncertain waters to the harbor, we strive to guide our clients from financial uncertainty towards their financial goals. Just like that lighthouse is the direction the ship desires to go, the financial plan is the direction the client is striving to go.

The lighthouse itself represents the plan. We are the beam of light connecting our clients (the ship) with their plan (the lighthouse).

When we have just the lighthouse, it represents to us that financial planning is the key to our clients pursuing their goals and living a fulfilling life. It’s our way of saying we are a financial planning firm, and we are passionate about financial planning.  We are “fans” of financial planning.

Also in our logo is a cross. This company was founded on Christian values and guides us in our decision and is the basis of our core values.

What is Swag?

We believe that if we have a uniquely crazy culture that our team loves, they will want to share their allegiance to our culture with the world. The best way to do that is through the use, or some would say overuse, of our logo on branded items we call Swag.

Although there are many origin stories of the term, the most common one we hear is swag is an acronym for “Stuff We All Get.” It was popularized as a form of advertising to conference attendees in the dot com bubble of the 90s. Over time, it has come to refer to an item with a logo on it. At Beratung, it refers to any branded items we have.

The Results of Swag

For us, it’s a way for our clients, team, and friends to show their pride in our company. This love of our logo has resulted in a lot of swag (or branded items) and even a “Swag Room” to house our inventory.

As we have given out swag over the years we have heard “I have seen more of your logo at my financial planner’s office than their own,” “how is it possible for me to see your logo everywhere I go when you are a small company” and “I keep finding out my friends are clients because I see your logo on them.”

We have had clients and friends send us pictures from all over the world with our logo. We run into our logo when at friends and clients’ homes and offices.

The result is people in the greater Pittsburgh area have exposure to our brand and our story before we meet them.

Our Swag Strategy

The problem with traditional Swag strategies is it’s all about getting the most quantity or your logo to give out as much as possible, instead of getting the most quality. You will often see at conferences or events companies handing out all kinds of cheap things you will never use and just throw away to create “brand awareness.”

There are two issues with this strategy.

The first is if you do not use the item and throw it away, you do not remember the brand.

The second, and I believe the real issues is, if I use some cheap thing and it breaks or doesn’t work well, I will subconsciously connect that to the brand on it.

Instead, we look for high quality items we love and use and then find a way to get our brand on them. We also love items that people use often but do not think of, or like to buy like chip clips, koozies, pens and scratch pads. We find if we buy high quality items, not only do people use them, but they also use them constantly, ask for more and then give them to their friends. The whole time they are subliminally thinking of us and associating us with quality!

An example of this is pens. When I started Beratung, I specifically asked for Uniball 207 gel pens (we now have converted to Pilot G-2). The vendor I used, that was referred by a friend, had been in the promotional item business for years. When I requested these pens, he was flabbergasted.

First, he has a hard time finding a vendor that had it in his 20 or so catalogs he brought in via a cart, like it was ordering from Sears catalog in the 90s. Then he said in all his years he never had a special request for a pen and could not understand why it had to be that pen. Then when he found it, he was shocked as he quoted it was over $2 a pen, and the most expensive pens he sold were less than $1 apiece. He tried to persuade me to get the most from my small startup budget to go with a cheaper pen and give out more. I simply walked over to my desk and gave him one that I had without my logo and told him to start using this, and he would understand. I told him to place the order for less pens because I want a quality pen that people want to use and do not just use it because it was there.

We often have clients ask for extra pens to give to friends and referrals that have mentioned in the first meeting about how much the person that referred them to us loves our pens.

Another example of this was a client once called me frantic asking if I could overnight him one of our umbrellas. It was his favorite umbrella and he got caught in a bad windstorm, and it broke after many years of heavy use. Have you ever liked a promotional item so much you called to ask for another one? Every time that clients use their umbrellas, they think of us!

The last part of our strategy is picking out unique things that are not often used. This makes us stand out and there is a higher likelihood someone will remember our brand. My favorite examples of this is during our annual cigar smoker, we brand the ice cubes in people’s drinks with our logo, and we also seal our thank you cards with our logo on a wax seal. The more unique you are with it; the more people will remember. It also becomes fun thinking through new ways to brand.

Our Culture of Swag

We do not just stop with our strategy of picking quality swag; we also provide swag to our team members.  Upon hire, every team member gets to choose 5 items and if they would like additional items, they receive those at 50% discount. We also encourage our team to get our logo embroidered on things they already own and love. If it is quality and they wear it, it is truly better than a billboard. If we are fans, we will create our culture around our logo. We will be proud to give it out. We will reward ideas and continue to come up with more ideas of quality items to put our logo on. We love to have fun with this! I have suit jackets lined with our logo. We give items out as gifts and we love to leave koozies, pens and more at places when we travel. We also love receiving pictures from our clients using our swag on their travel, specifically our luggage tags and travel coffee mugs!

Our Vendors

We are often asked what vendor we use. We use many vendors because of our strategy of quality items you want to use. We start with great items we love and then find a way to get our brand on them. To help you with your branding, here is a list of vendors we have used often.

• Tees-n-Tops embroidery, clothing, and promotional items 
• Quality Logo Products – promotional items
• 4 Imprint – promotional items
• Etsy – just about any branded idea you can think of
• Zippo – lighters
• Yeti – coolers and drinkware
• Benchmade– Knives
• Custom Ink –T-Shirts
• Promotique by VistaPrint – clothing and promotional items (they have low minimums on many items)
• StickerMule – Stickers, packaging, labels, and key chains
• com lapel pins, magnetic pins, and cufflinks
• DiscountMugs – mugs, glassware, and promotional items
• Stampitude – wax seal stamps and ice cube stamps
• Grandstand – glassware
• GrammWorks – ashtray, lighters, and humidors
• Personal Wine – bottles of wine and champagne

Our Swag List

We are constantly asked what the craziest thing or most unique thing is you have put your logo on. We all have different answers but to me it’s still our custom Bourbon!

Here is a list of all the things we have put our logo on, along with some pictures to give you ideas for your branding strategy.