Who can explain the allure of those logo-stamped gimmes that tech companies hand out by the armload?
All of us! And the schlock wave is still rising – fast. By Warren Berger Jerry McLaughlin doesn’t pretend to understand the many mysteries of schwag. “Honestly, I don’t think anyone has figured it out,” says the amiable, babyfaced 36-year-old CEO of Branders.com, a Bay Area startup that is using the Internet to reinvent one of the oldest advertising shticks on Earth – logo-stamped freebies, aka promotional products, tchotchkes, swag, or, if you prefer the faux-Yiddish derivative, schwag. McLaughlin, a former venture capitalist who surprised and probably worried his Silicon Valley colleagues when he announced he was giving up high finance to peddle two-buck stress balls and translucent mousepads, simply can’t explain why smart, tech-savvy people (including lots of millionaires) are so enamored of chubby pens, garish hats, and letter openers shaped like @’s. Why do they grapple and lunge for the stuff at tech conventions: Comdex, Macworld, Seybold, and the like? Why do they schlep bagful
