The first and most important thing you need to understand is that your gift will be perceived as an embodiment of what your company represents. It is a totally different ball game from giving out promotional gift items. You need to get it right, otherwise you will be sending the wrong message and could end up eroding the value of your brand.

Buying a watch as a business gift…. Outside the organisation

Organisations will choose to give gifts to people outside their organisation for several reasons, but in one way or the other it would be linked with appreciation for the contribution that the client/customer has made towards the furtherance of their business.

When giving a business gift as a corporate organisation:

·The first and most important thing you need to understand is that the gift will be perceived as an embodiment of what your company represents. This totally different from giving out promotional gift items.

You need to get it right, otherwise you could be sending the wrong message and end up eroding the value of your brand.

The gift may be perceived by the recipient as an expression of the value that you think they have been to your organisation. You don’t want to leave your customer/client feeling undervalued.

A watch does very well as a business gift for several reasons:

• Watches generally have a long life span – unlike things like the TV sets or phones, they rarely go out of fashion
• They are also very durable: a good quality watch even when worn every day will last for years and years and would still be working and in good condition by the time the wearer has gotten tired of it.
• They are very dependable: Regardless of whatever else is going wrong around you, you can depend on your watch to always be there for you (telling you the correct time when you need it to)

You can’t go wrong with the choice of a watch, but you can go wrong with the choice of the watch, so proper thought must be given to the choice… and it’s not just about how expensive it is. When giving a watch to a customer to celebrate a milestone that is personal to them, adequate thought must be giving to the personality of the customer as well as the occasion/event being celebrated.

However, when the organisation is giving out gifts that are not recipient specific, for example gifts for its AGM or end of year/anniversary, etc. and the customers/a specific cadre of customers will all be getting the same gift, then things must be done differently.

If the decision is to give a watch, then more thought must be given to who your company is and what it stands for/what you want it perceived as standing for than to the individual recipients.

Brands have a DNA, you want to make sure that your brand DNA is in sync with the Brand DNA of the watch.

 Sometime ago we did some Swiss Army Knives for a Bank… this was because the bank wanted to relaunch itself as the Swiss Army Knife of Banking… Part of the DNA of the Swiss Army Knife is its multifunctionality this was what the bank was looking to be associated with.

 So, when deciding on this talk to the professional’s:

When you tell us about your company and what you stand for, we can easily recommend to you the brand that will be best suited to represent your brand.

You don’t want to be giving out counterfeits …. Think of the damage that can be done to your brand. It goes a long way when your clients know that the gift they have received from you will enjoy a 2 or 3 year warranty

Don’t be pennywise, pound foolish: A few years back, a Bank ordered from us as part of their corporate gifts some Victorinox Swiss Army flash drives (a Swiss Army Knife with a flash drive) for their high-end customers. They were so well received that there was a clamour from customers that didn’t get, that the bank was forced to do something.

 The bank being cost conscious decided to go with another vendor who was able to offer them cheaper flash drive. These didn’t have the Swiss Army Knife component, so it was considerably cheaper but comparatively more expensive.

Within 3 weeks, many of the customers who received these cheaper flash drives were calling in, really furious as they had stored important documents of the flash drives and within a few weeks the flash drives had crashed. This ended up being a PR disaster for the bank. They eventually called us and ordered more of the Victorinox flash drives

Lesson, it’s always better to do it right. It might be more expensive at the onset, but on the long run, it is cheaper and always better