Campaign's That Stick

If you’ve watched any Hollywood awards shows this year, you’ve probably noticed one wardrobe accessory adorning nearly every designer dress and jacket on the red carpet.
Lapel pins!

From the Time’s Up enamel pin featured at The Golden Globes, to the orange Everytown pin worn at the Academy Awards, lapel pins and the causes they promote have been a constant this awards season. While using lapel pins to promote awareness is nothing new, the lapel pin’s rise in popularity in the retail and collectors’ markets have (die) struck a resonant chord with supporters, making lapel pins the must-have fashion statement in Hollywood and beyond.

So what is it about lapel pins that captivate cause marketers and their supporters?

Our friends at EMT suggest these 3 reasons, lapel pins "stick" your message: 

1. Eye-Catching and Effective Campaigns

• With a custom lapel pin, the design can be tailored to compliment the messaging of the campaign, and spark conversation around the cause. Provocative or subtle, color filled or modestly finished, lapel pins are impossible to ignore.

Want proof?

• Re-watch any red carpet interview show to see how many times the conversation turned from fashion and film, to awareness. Nearly every interview became an opportunity to divert the discussion into something more substantive, and demonstrate the wearer’s commitment to a cause.

Now, move that conversation off the red carpet and into your local coffee shop, and you’ll see why so many awareness, political, and social campaigns find grassroots promotional success with lapel pins.

2. Fashion-Forward Fundraising

• In the business of swag, we often talk about ROI and cost of a product versus its perceived value. With custom lapel pins, campaigners are offered an economical promotional investment with a perceived value that far outweighs their cost.

• Additionally, creating a brand identity around a cause or organization is as necessary for non-profits as it is for corporate marketers. The versatility of lapel pin design offers marketers the ability to tailor their message to very specific audience, and effectively engage supporters and donors. These messages live on as people wear and re-wear these pins, and as photos and videos of the events are played on television and posted online, amplifying the message even further.
  

By employing different metal finishes, enamel color, and enhancements (think jewels, moving parts or printed presentation cards), lapel pins can be customized to achieve any look or style – from whimsical to tailored, or playful to sophisticated. Truly, there is a lapel pin option that works for everyone. It can become confusing to navigate all the choices, which is why we stock our showroom with examples of different processes, so you can touch and feel the difference first hand. However if you are looking for a quick e guide to share with a friend, this one from EMT is a great resource.

3. It's not the butterfly clip that makes lapel pins stick around, it's the emotional attachment.

• Lapel pins have long been used in employee, volunteer, and donor programs to recognize service and achievement. One of the reasons these programs are so successful is the ability of a lapel pin to create an emotional connection between the wearer and the organization that is tangible. The emotions felt when these pins are seen and worn are tied to a person’s ideals, their identity, and their memories, and those sentimental attachments run deep. So deep, in fact, that lapel pin trading and collecting has permeated pop culture to spark lapel pin enthusiast conventions all over the world.

Few promotional tools carry the kind of longevity that lapel pins carry. Long after a pen’s ink runs dry or a calendar’s pages run out, lapel pins continue to send messages that spark emotional connections, and create call backs to memories that would otherwise be forgotten.
In short, cause marketers are drawn to lapel pins because they are a small product that pack the power to send big messages that stick!