The Cole Papers, Freebies, July 1997

Lotsa loot: Ms. Freebies Police did well this year.

... and all I got was this T-shirt

NEW ORLEANS -- Were there more freebies out there this year, a sure sign of rebounding health in the industry?

Or was it just the dogged persistence of Ms. Freebies Police and her booth-to-booth search that brought out the trinkets?

No matter -- we bagged a bunch, and were as giddy as kiddies on Christmas morn. (And about as restrained -- after the photos were taken and the Cole hoard had left, the display table looked like post-Sherman Atlanta.)

Ah, well ... the idea here is the judging of freebies, not some permanent museum acquisition.

We should start with the "official" NEXPO bags. They were ubiquitous, of course; everyone who registered for the show was to get one (the supply apparently ran out sometime on Monday). And, with the brazen Microsoft BackOffice logo emblazoned on the side, they qualified as freebies.

But how good were they? As a young chicken we know says, "Cheap, cheap, cheap." No inside or outside pockets to keep supplier propaganda in its place. Not enough length in the strap to allow it to fall rakishly (yet comfortably) off the hip; instead, it rode up so high that you risked getting the zipper caught in your armpit hair.

Next year, we recommend that the NEXPO staff should give out distinctive bags, tailored to attendees' areas of interest -- plastic totes for press and post-press, canvas for pre-press, and hand-tooled, imported leather for members of the industry media.

Just a thought.

Best of show: An easy call -- the clock from Atex Media Solutions. Gold-trimmed (and analog with Roman numerals -- extra irony points!), encased in a block of clear plastic. A very classy act that will get the company name on countless desks.

Naturally, Atex ran out of them early.

Runner-up: Chinese stress balls from Gannett Media Technologies International. We heard that these sets of lacquered balls with chimes inside had all been given out midway into the show. But we heard from others that no, they were just being hidden in the booth from casual visitors intent on just getting the goods without buying anything.

People like us, for example.

Runner-up: The Microsoft massager. This spidery-looking wooden tripod looked silly until somebody started using it on our backs at the end of a long day on the convention center floor. Proposals of marriage from massagee to massager ensued.

Wonderful -- it almost makes you forgive Microsoft for Windows 95. Almost.

Best hat: No contest, the Headbone Hat. A tiny booth tucked in a corner of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center yielded a beret with a pole sticking up and a white bone waving in the breeze.

If NEXPO had allowed kids on the floor, this place would have been mobbed. As it is, they can mob the web site and look at the kid-oriented educational goodies disguised as fun awaiting therein: http://www.headbone.com/.

Best pen, high-end: Who can argue with the Cross ballpoint from GMA, or the Quill from Mitsubishi Manufacturing? Both have excellent reputations and lifetime warranties.

Instead, we'll argue with the Parker gift set, available at scads of booths. It's supposed to look like a pen and pencil set, but when you look closer, the pencil is actually the ink cartridge for the adjacent pen.

We were shocked -- shocked!

Best pen, low-end: The Cole staff went ga-ga over the Pongrass ballpoint, a hefty hunk o' plastic with a rubberized grip. However, Ms. Freebies Police thinks honors should go to CE Engineering for its nondescript, clicking ballpoint that didn't leak, didn't skip, and was just a good, all-around pen.

The Mister, however, goes for flash over function and votes for a blue metal job with a rubber grip, wire wheels and factory air from Dauphin Graphic Machines.

Best flashlight: Ewert America Electronics Ltd. gave out a tiny MagLite, with a good alkaline battery and a keychain. All aluminum, nicely done, a good reflection on the company.

Best T-shirt: For content, we were most impressed by the cartoon-laden Quark XPress shirt. For design, it was Burt Technologies, which gave out actual polo shirts with collars.

Runner-up: Markzware, which had shirts in girls' styles. Take that, you unisex purveyors!

Best coffee cup: We have to give this honor to MCI, with reservations. The cup was extra-large, appealing to the extra-large freebies writer.

It came in its own shipping box. And inside were packets of Cappucino and tea.

The reservations? As a coffee cup, it'd make a good soup bowl or planter. But for coffee-drinking purposes, the lip is concave, which ruins the flow control, leading to coffee-down-the-shirt syndrome.

Best mousepad: The rat mat, from ECRM. It's thin enough to sit unobtrusively on the desk, plus it has adhesive to keep it there.

Runner-up: Same thing, but without the adhesive, from Syntellect.

Sweetest freebie: The Ghiradelli chocolates at the IBM booth. The glass bowl never was empty, despite frenzied assaults on it from passers-by. Who knows how many boxes went from chocolate plant directly to our sagging derrieres?

Sweetest freebie-giver: The woman dispensing plastic Slinkies from Media Passage. She kept asking, "How many children do you have?" She made sure you had enough copies of the slithery toy to take home to the brood.

Most bountiful booth: Ewert America Electronics Ltd. just gave out a canvas bag with the aforementioned MagLite, coffee cups, a pen, Rand McNally road atlas, a screwdriver and golf balls. No muss, no fuss.

Most useful freebie: Kodak, in return for a filled-out marketing questionnaire, was giving out some great new Ektapress multispeed film. You can shoot it at ASA 100 to 1000 and have it developed at the drug store. We used it to illustrate this story.

Runner-up: AP's badge necklace. There were a lot of badge-holders out there and they were all nice. But they had clips on the ends, so you had to take the clip off the official NAA badge and clip the necklace to the badge.

AP's, on the other hand, had a ring on the end so you just clipped to that -- elegantly simple.

If we'd seen any punksters with rings through their noses, they wouldn't have even needed the necklace. But we didn't see any of those.

-- John Bryan

... and all I got was this T-shirt

From THE COLE PAPERS, July 1997, Copyright © 1997, All Rights Reserved.