The End of SWAG?

By Dean Schwartz: Every year on January 1, since 1976, Lake Superior State University in Michigan issues a list of words that it proposes for banishment in the coming year. It is a list that is generated from the collective feedback of more than 800 individuals throughout the world. This year, the word SWAG made that fateful list.

Some folks who expressed their desire to ban the word held no punches. Bailey Anderson from Washington, Iowa, said “Swag has become a shapeless, meaningless word used in various forms (such as ‘swaggy’) but with no real depth.

 Ouch.

Others were just irritated by the sound of the word, but some in particular caught our attention, such as this quote from Jeff Drake of St. Albans, West Virginia: “Whether it’s a ‘free gift’ or droopy clothing, this word is neither useful nor fancy.”

It immediately became evident to us that Mr. Drake has obviously never worked with a custom promotional products company like SOBO Concepts. Because if he’d ever walked through our office, or even our website, he’d find no droopy clothing, plenty of things that are useful, and a wide variety of things he’d surely refer to as fancy.

One thing he’d find plenty of? SWAG with SWAG.

But hey, we get it. In fact, if it were up to us, anyone who used the word SWAG without actually delivering it would be banned from using the word, too.

Thankfully for us, there are plenty of examples of what SWAG is not, and it’s made our jobs as true artists of SWAG even easier. Because while there is a place for the guy down the street to slap a logo onto a t-shirt, pencil or water bottle and tell you how cool it is, we came into existence to be the exact opposite.

To us SWAG isn’t another chunky shirt that ends up in your Goodwill donation bag. We pour our hearts into our work. To us, SWAG says that whether it’s a custom USB, a custom messenger bag made from recycled goods, customized uniforms, cutting edge fabrics or high-end finishes, it gets our best artistic, business-driven effort, every time.

If Mr. Drake knew that kind of SWAG, he’d understand why we’re not banning the word SWAG. Instead, we’re going to continue to redefine the public’s perception of it so that anyone who tries to associate SWAG with useless, shapeless, meaningless or droopy won’t have ground to stand on.

SWAG may have been those things at one point. But now, it’s SOBO SWAG time. Give us a call at 888.752.0432 to put the old SWAG to bed, and kick 2015 off with some of the most innovative custom promotional products you’ve ever seen.