I almost always depart industry events with more stuff than I had when I arrived. On my desk right now, I have a CompTIA acrylic cup, an Autotask mug, a Taylor Business Group pen, and a Robin Robins leather legal-pad folio. I also have a slinky-like, elastic, spongy, tentaticled toy (I have NO idea what this thing is supposed to be) from an Orange County datacenter. Bottom line: I have a bunch of branded stuff. And I keep the interesting and the useful stuff, and throw the rest away.

As a service provider, I find it important to develop the Rezitech and MSPintegrations brands, and to be sure that our customers think of us often. To accomplish this, we need our SWAG to be memorable or useful – or both. This is a difficult feat to accomplish with so many options available, and I simply don’t have the time to keep up on what’s available. I’m also not the creative guy around here, and my ideas are probably only going to be memorable as my staff laughs at me for ordering yet another box of monitor squeegies that we’ll never be able to give away.

With this in mind, I was quite excited to join Kyle Kalma of Clear Media for lunch yesterday (we met at one of my favorite Fullerton restaraunts, The Olde Ship). Kyle is the local SWAG genius (oh, SWAG stands for Stuff We All Get, in case you were wondering) and I used my lunch opportunity to learn more about Clear Media, their products, and a little bit about what makes Kyle tick.

The thing that stands out to me about Kyle is his desire to create a long lasting relationship with his customers. The SWAG industry is filled with one-shot sales guys who want to sell whatever they can and then move on. Kyle, on the other hand, would rather talk me out of a poor purchase so that he can continue to earn my long-term business. He definately understands the value of relationships and building long-lasting business partnerships and I value that about him. He strives to understand our business and customers so that he can make some great recommendations (he came up with a killer idea to follow up to our recent StickerTrav campaign — it’s going to be hilarious).

I’m thrilled to consider Clear Media our partner thanks to Kyle’s excellent work.