When the average business professional thinks about promotional products and advertising specialties, what comes to mind might not be ground breaking. Pens, mugs, hats and embroidered wearables are all favorite classic items that are used by everyday people, and are reserved enough in their designs to let a company’s logo shine or their brand name do the talking. Whatever your customers’ needs for customization of products, Idea Custom Solutions can help you through the process.

Yet for some customers or potential new accounts, you may find that the usual ideas that you and your competitors present to most people feel run-of-the-mill to businesses who really want to make a splash.

As a distributor of specialty advertising products you should try to land those clients with particular, higher-end needs. While some megabrands out there like Southwest Airlines and Snickers are remembered for their sense of humor in branding, humor and attention-grabbing promotional ideas are not specific only to major corporations with multi-million dollar budgets. In 2015 and beyond, SMBs of all types are looking for special ways to make their names ring a bell while differentiating themselves from the other guy down the block.

Consider some of the more outside the box ideas that marketers have used in recent years for promotions.

Sports

For starters, both sports organizations and SMBs that like to use sports as a part of their promotion and branding have used everything from branded golf balls and outerwear such as golf shirts, windbreakers and winter fleeces with embroidered logos on them to help push their brands. Wearable and sports items are things that consumers want and use, and like the now famous bobble-head dolls offered during game day promotions by baseball teams, are keepers.

Yet, as cubicle dweller Dwight Schrute showed us on The Office, you need not be a baseball slugger or Hall of Famer like Derek Jeter to have your own bobble-head.

Last year, during the soccer World Cup, the world’s most popular sporting event, apparel companies took it up a notch, courting women with more fashion and personal statement type items than typical sports emblems. Watchmaker Hublot offered pieces with both patriotic pieces and custom color selections, while shoe giants Adidas and Converse let women soccer fans celebrate the foot-focused game with customizable options and hand-painted Brazil 2014 designs.

Entertainment

Moving on from sports, the entertainment industry has been a playground for some of the more unusual promotional products that have been used to grab attention of prospective spectators and amusement seekers. The promoters of television drama Prison Break have issued its audience a prison-grade small bar of soap, while viewers of Kendra, the celebrity parent reality TV show, can tune in with a Kendra-branded bib for baby. On the more festive side, the Twentieth Century Fox and Smithsonian Museum offered fans a blue-glass Christmas ornament. Other atypical swag included food items like un-popped popcorn buckets and branded bottles of hot sauce, and quirky towel and bath sets.

Technology

Another type of swag you have probably been hearing a lot about is the tech gadgets being given out at both trade shows and more public events like the NCAA basketball championships. Items like Jambox speakers, earbuds and Beats By Dre music headphones have cropped up alongside iPhone cases at techy conferences and the March 2015 SXSW Music Fest in Austin, Texas, while winning hoops college teams get nice tech swag like tablets and Bose sound docks.

Keep in mind, though, that the fact that some brands are going high-end with technology giveaways need not be a discouraging factor in approaching SMBs about their specialty advertising needs. Your small and medium business customers come in all sizes with varied budgets and diverse audiences.

The key is to talk to your clients about different ideas and how they want to express the personalities of their brands. Some of your small business customers may want to use promotional products as reminder advertising, with classics like pens and wearables bearing their brand names. Other prospective customers will be more interested in making an impact with the kind of items that bring business people to their booths at trade shows.

Whatever your customers’ preferences, make sure to offer them a variety of options and talk to partners like Idea Custom Solutions about complementing great products with high-quality graphics.