Tchotchkey Wars

Perhaps it’s the tighter economic times. Programmers can’t afford to just throw money at TCA room drops and think they’ve done their job. A costly, huge basket of goodies just isn’t in the budget at the moment.

Still the fight for eyeballs continues, and critics play a vital part in cultivating buzz (or so programmers think), thus the room drops continue. Interestingly the sluggish economy seems to have resulted in programmers being more thoughtful than usual with their spending for room tchotchkeys. Below is a quick look at what was left behind.

Highlights:

* It was AMC’s week, no doubt, with Mad Men’s huge splash. AMC left nothing to chance, stuffing critics’ hotel rooms with the season 1 DVD, a CD with music from the show and a Do Not Disturb sign. The best items were the smallest—a note on the stationery of the series’ fictional ad agency, Sterling Cooper, inviting critics to a set visit (we assume the visit isn’t fictional also), and a water pen, which when turned over shows the black-and-white figure from the show’s opening sequence descending into the abyss. Brilliant.

* Planet Green instantly became critics’ eco friend with a gift bag made of 80% post consumer waste. The bag’s insides were local, green and low cal. Did you see that cotton candy that contained not a gram of fat or a single artificial color or flavor? Better than that, it tasted great. How about that organic chocolate, the organic olives or the fish oil pills?

 Well Done:

* Loved Nat Geo’s simple but effective room drop. For its Expedition Week it left a compass attached to a portable water bottle. For World’s Toughest Fixes critics received the fix-it book When Duct Tape Just Isn’t Enough. As we said, simple but effective.

Well, OK:

History (formerly The History Channel) isn’t ready to re-write tchotchkey history. To tout its session featuring Sandhogs (Sept premiere) and Einstein (Q4) it left critics the only logical gift it could come up with—a selection of chocolates in an edible basket. “Einstein, after a long day of bombarding atoms loved to relax with a good piece of chocolate; this everyone knows,” a History official insisted. “And didn’t you notice the pecan sandies included with the chocolates? They were a nod to the Sandhogs,” the official continued. Perhaps. Still,  a very tasty but disappointingly routine gift.

A better idea would have been an Einstein action doll. How about a book about Einstein or a small chemistry set? Or even products from Baby Einstein (remember, critics are genetically cheap, they could have re-gifted those goodies and, hey, the holidays are right around the corner). What about a small sand sculpture, obviously in the form of a hog? Like Einstein’s universe, the possibilities seem endless.

Tomorrow: On-site swaggery and the cleverness of encasing flashdrives.