Hi afficiondo,

Do you live in a ‘cool’ city? Cities and councils can have surprisingly good merch. The City of Sydney has setup at dog parks handing out pet merch branded with council branding, promoting thinks like picking your dog’s shit up, keeping them on leash, and making sure they’re hydrated on hot days.

Here’s more merch from government offices around the world:

Consider showing some hometown love in your next merch drop!

I’m a staunch “Japanese bands have the best merch” believer and Ryokuoushoku Shakai (Spotify link if you’re curious) is just one example of it. Every tour they always have kitchen accessories, and over time they’ve built up quite the catalogue of items:

In just this limited selection, we’ve got a water bottle holder, tongs, a soup spoon, lunchbox, a sandwich press (?!), apron, and heat resistant gloves. These are great because sometimes you want to support the band but you don’t want a kind of ugly band shirt that goes straight into the PJ pile…

“No such thing as too many” gousehold goods are great merch items because 1. they’re useful and it doesn’t matter if they’re kind of ugly and 2. they’ll get a lot of use in everyday life and each use is a brand touchpoint!

I had a whole *THING* I was going to write for this first actual send to our first actual wave of actual subscribers, but I parked it when I got tagged in this post. One ‘Madeleine Work’ did the work alright, reporting back on the best booth activations at the ForresterB2B summit in Phoenix AZ. I could care less about Forrester, but some of the inspo in here, is cooking.

Custom Perfume (!!) c/o Optimizely. Custom Tote Bags c/o Wordpress. Custom Hats c/o a few big co’s. Custom Cookies c/o Cvent. B2B Movie poster bootlegs c/o Influ2.

A few great ideas right there, especially to make people linger at your stand. Whereas at Sunrise Sydney which I attended, Anthropic had 30 people in attendance, and had thousands of hats to give away, that was self-serve to take, and no-one seemingly caring to chat about that brand at all when they did. Hmmm.

When I see merch and booth executions like this one at Forrester, my eye starts twitching and I start thinking about the merch and booth situations in Australia and then I start forgetting to breathe and typing louder And Then Quickly THe STeam STARTS RISING OUT OF MY HEAD IN FURY AT WHY WE DON’T THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX AND THEN Kayla taps me on the shoulder and says “Gaz, it’s just a merch newsletter. You’re overthinking this again. Finish up and press send.”

Yes, we are talking about the custom aspect above, that is actually incredibly important in this piece. Custom means time. Tim spent waiting for the finished product to be handed over. Time that the team can spend telling you all about their company, and if its a good company that serves a great need, then everyone waiting for their custom piece is a potential customer. I would 1000% be making people custom hot sauce or spice blends if I could - something they’d use - creating HOT HEAT Sauce by DRIP DROP to them vigorously, while getting their subscription to this Friday goodness.

"You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling." - Tom Hardy in Inception *pulls out his grenade launcher*

Hungry for more merch content?

Check out the DRIP DROP Sublime for more merch inspo