Personalized Poker Chips the New Calling Card? (1)

Businesses are always looking for a new innovative way to make their mark or have their brand remembered with a potential customer. While business cards are, to some, necessary evil, though perhaps more of a necessary cliché, unless you are in a creative field there is little new that can be done creatively with a business card that hasn't already been done before. So, the question becomes, what can you use to give to your clients that will be kept and, more importantly (and fortuitously) shown around? Well, interestingly enough, a customized, logo-ized, and otherwise branded poker chip can serve the purpose quite well.

Now, granted, while a poker chip wouldn't be the suitable substitute to a business card for all occasions, it does have potential. A personalized poker may seem like an odd choice for a new calling card, however, with a bit of creativity, it can leave its mark, which is what a brand or logo is supposed to do.

One of the first advantages is that customized poker chips are available in many different designs. Not only are we talking about regular playing chips that are personalized, but there are a wide variety of other options such as chocolate poker chips, poker chip shaped pins, and even jewelry made from chips. With all these options available and a bit of creativity your company can make great customer gifts that will definitely make an impression on your customer and have your brand remembered.

A second advantage to branded poker chips are their cost. In a word they're cheap. How cheap? Well not cheaper than business cards by any means, but they are quite inexpensive which may be something quite important to you if you're looking for innovative ways to make a mark without breaking the budget. And compared to the escalating costs of many business cards and brochures once you start trying to get fancy, with various die-cuts, fold-outs, photo effects, and so on, a single run of branded chips won’t break the bank.

The benefit here is that if your custom chips are a hit, you can scale up production and start taking advantage of price breaks as you buy in bulk. If not, then you still get to enjoy the benefits of a novel use of your brand, which your clients will probably remember for quite some time anyway. Plus, while this is getting popular, not everyone is doing it yet, so we’re not inundated with these custom chips yet, so, ergo, it’s not cliché. Stop for a moment and just think of all of the junk monogrammed ballpoint pens that you’ve received and then quickly tossed out, or that are still cluttering up your kitchen drawer.

In Part 2, we'll continue our discussion with the third advantage.