Branded items and gifts can be powerful tools for building and repairing trust in business relationships, as highlighted by MK Getler-Porizkova in this engaging conversation.

They emphasize the importance of intentionality behind gifting, distinguishing between traditional swag and meaningful gifts that resonate on a personal level. MK shares practical tips on when to use branded items versus unbranded gifts, stressing that thoughtful gestures can significantly enhance human connections and foster loyalty.

Through real-world case studies, such as how Caraway Home effectively uses gifts to recover trust after service issues, listeners gain insights into actionable strategies for their own businesses. With a focus on sustainability and social impact, MK encourages organizations to rethink their approach to corporate gifting, aiming to create a more authentic and empathetic marketing landscape.

Takeaways:

• Branded gifts can enhance relationships, unlike traditional swag that often lacks meaning.
• To build trust, consider the recipient's familiarity with your brand and their relationship with you.
• Curated gift collections allow recipients to choose items that resonate with their personal lives.
• Using gifts strategically in customer lifecycle moments can deepen connections and celebrate achievements.
• Sending gifts during service recoveries can help rebuild trust after a negative experience.
• The environmental impact of corporate gifting can be reduced through intentional gifting practices.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Loop Tie
• Caraway Home

Welcome to another episode of Trust Builders.

Today I have MK Gettler.

MK is the Chief Marketing Officer of Loop Tie.

And I'm really thrilled to have you here on the podcast because you bring a very unique set of ideas and things we haven't actually covered before.

So before I go into that, though, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm thrilled to be able to dive in today's conversation.

Awesome.

So let me address the elephant in the room.

I am a big, big hater of swag.

I mean, I cannot stand it.

Every time I go to a conference and there are those, like, massive amount of branded pens and squeezy balls and all the other stupid things, and most of them get thrown away anyway.

So from a sustainability perspective, from a value add, it's just bs, right?

I can't say bigger words, but it's.

But you and I had this conversation before.

There's actually a very nuanced different way of doing it, and that is swag.

So branded gifts versus actual gifts, and there's a place for everything.

Can you just walk us through what is the difference between a branded item like swag and a gift?

Yes, that's a great question.

And it's often one of the very foundational parts that we have when we talk with our customers or prospective customers.

So when we think of SWAG and the acronym SWAG really stands for stuff, we all get.

And I just keep coming back to that term, stuff, right?

It's stuff.

It's devoid of any meaning, it's devoid of any intentionality.

And the type of swag that you are referring to, the pens, the squish balls, the stuff we all get when we go to events or trade shows, is the type of stuff that does not have any productive impact on advancing your relationship with somebody.

It's nice to have.

It's not a need to have.

And I do think to your point, it's such a waste of budget, and it's also really harmful to the environment.

Now, that is when you think about stuff we all get.

And there is a category of branded merch that is really high impact, high value style branded merch.

Those are the types of little touches that are really meaningful and powerful to the relationship that you're trying to build.

And sometimes a branded merch item can be a gift, and other times a branded merch item is just, you know, it's an additional thing to add to, you know, your.

Your relationship.

And then of course there are gifts, and at least by how we define gifts at Lupin Tie, it is.

They are items that were thoughtfully secured or curated or purchased that do not have any branding embellishments on it.

It is a gift that is somehow complimenting, enhancing, elevating, celebrating the personal life of the person that you are sending the gift to.

So that gift should be something that, you know, helps.

Like I said, it resonates with this person on a more personal level rather than a more one to many level, like a swag or a traditional branded merch item would do.

Yeah, there's.

There's so much to pick apart.

But one thing that stuck out to me right now when you were explaining this was to use it to build a relationship.

And I saw you guys sitting there and I thought I had another swag coming.

But then you had this campaign that actually said, send a little gift to someone you want to say thank you to.

And I actually was like, oh my God, I'm going to send something to my mom.

Because you know what?

I haven't said thank you to my mom in a while.

And she's been so supportive.

Amazing.

So she got an email and she called me up and she's like, oh my God.

Like, is that really, like, did you send it?

I'm like, yeah.

And I get to pick something.

And I'm like, yeah.

So it was really special to her, but that's where sort of that gift, you know, comes in.

Yeah.

So when is it appropriate to use swag versus a branded item?

Or when is it appropriate to use swag and slash, branded item versus a gift?

When is that sort of cut off?

It's a great question, and it's oftentimes one that we really spend time being discerning with our customers about.

And also I should contextualize Lupin Tie a little bit before we dive in and why we think about things in the way and the framework in which we think about them.

So at Lupin Tie, we see ourselves as an engine of social impact, and we see corporate gifting budgets as an engine of social impact as well too.

So our job is to convert the $306 billion worth of marketing and employee lifecycle budgets spent on corporate gifting into engines of social impact.

So you can gift 6 billion.

It's a.

It's a massive industry annually.

Like, that's how much is spent annually on corporate gift.

And I will say I'll categorize that.

That's every facet of gifts.

So the swag that we talked about, those are the gifts, these are the personalized gifts, these are the branded merchandise things.

This is all encompassing of the field.

But we think that with a bit more intentionality, not just with what you send, but why you send them and when you send them, that budget can be immensely impactful to support economic sustainability, social sustainability, and of course, environmental sustainability as well too.

So when we think about gifting, we look at this on two axises.

We look at this on the axis of your relationship, or in other words, your familiarity with someone.

And the other axis is that person's familiarity or association with your brand.

So when you look at that axis, you look at your relationship.

So the highest point being what we call besties, you're besties with this person, you are airtight with them on a one to one level.

And then of course, being least familiar, you're complete strangers.

You don't know these people, you have no familiarity whatsoever.

Then the, the other axis, like I said, is their association with your brand.

And so are they a brand skeptic?

Are they not familiar?

Or are they a brand evangelist and already talking about your brand?

And when you really think critically about these two axises and start to plot out some of your relationships, for example, you could be super, super tight with someone.

We'll use your mom, for example, right?

You and your mom sound really close, but your mom may not necessarily be a huge evangelist of your brand.

Hopefully she is, because you have a great brand.

But it's entirely possible that your best friends, like my best friends, don't really know what I do for work and I don't know what they do for work.

And that's probably why we're best friends, right?

But they are besties with us.

They have no association with my brand.

And so with that type of a relationship, I'm going to give them a gift that's an unbranded gift because they have no connection whatsoever to my company.

Now, conversely, you might have besties who are huge brand evangelists out there in the world.

They are talking about and they could be your customers, they can be your prospects.

You could have your loyal customers who worked at a different brand being huge evangelists for your brand because they just jumped over to a new company and they are huge advocates for your brand and are trying to implement your, your company or your services inside of their new company.

And so at that Point in time, that is a perfect spot to consider giving them branded items or giving them unbranded items.

I wish I could have yet another little matrix in there as well too, because the frequency of what you send and how many items somebody already has with your product is a really important thing to consider as well too.

So you could have besties of yours who are huge brand evangelists, but who are over saturated in branded T shirts, many of which are ill fitting.

And so sending them yet another branded item just might not make sense for you to recognize and acknowledge the point in time that your relationship has evolved into.

Now, conversely, we'll think about the lower half of this two by two matrix and we think about folks who are complete strangers to your brand.

Now you could have a complete stranger to you who is obsessed with your brand.

For example, I love Lego, I love my wife and I both love Lego, but we are all but complete strangers to anybody who works at that organization.

We don't know anybody who works there.

We aren't super like tight with the marketing team there or, you know, the executive team there, but we are huge fans of this brand.

And if they sent us some like a LEGO T shirt, you better believe that T shirt is going to be framed and put up in a place of prominence inside of our home.

Because we're huge fans.

Right?

You too?

Yes, I see your best, but yeah, we have that one as well too.

So when you think about how you're trying to build that relationship, even though they are strangers, they can still be a huge brand evangelist and that's a great way to continue to draw them closer to you so that you're no longer in that level of being strangers.

You're getting more and more familiar.

So you're moving up in your relationship so you're getting it deeper and stronger and better with one another.

And then of course, you could have some brand skeptics out there and you could be completely unfamiliar with these people.

You're complete strangers with these people as well too.

So if they don't know your brand and if you don't know each other, it feels fragmented, it feels disjointed for you to send them a piece of branded merch.

So instead maybe consider a gift to help, you know, open up the lines of communication.

And especially when you approach your gifting in the way that Lupin TIE does, when you send someone a collection of gifts where they get to choose from an assortment of items that are curated for them, what they choose gives you the opportunity to get to know them.

A little bit better gives you that little icebreaker so that again, you can continue to advance your relationship and stop being strangers and instead be a bit more familiar.

Like, oh, hey, I noticed you redeemed the chef knives.

Are you a foodie?

Do you like to cook?

Or hey, I notice you redeemed the subscription for a pet box of the month.

Do you have a pet?

Tell me about your pet.

Who's your furry friend?

Who's your fluffy friend?

That kind of stuff can be really helpful in taking your level of familiarity from complete strangers into acquaintances.

And of course, as you build upon that foundation, you start to become besties.

So again, really, when you think about what your timing of what you should send and when you should send, it has everything to do with your level of familiarity with somebody on a one to one basis and that person's familiarity with your brand as well too.

So when you were just explaining that, what really stands out to me is that in every single quadrant, you're enhancing that human to human relationship.

Right, yeah.

Yep.

And you mentioned also that you have curated collections that you could send to people.

Yeah, that means.

Or could you just explain what that means and why it's important to have a curated collection rather than me just picking a gift to send to you?

Oh, it's a great, it's a great point.

When we think about the waste that's in the corporate gifting space, we know that the root cause of so much waste in this space is because folks are spraying and praying the same item to everyone.

And it's a staggering number.

Over 65% of items that are sent, especially during the holiday season, end up in a landfill, which is staggering.

The environmental impact of corporate gifting alone and the harmful environmental impact of corporate gifting alone is something that can be fixed pretty easily.

And the way that we have shifted the redemption, the sending and redemption process is by sending a curated collection of items to someone so that they essentially can pick or select the item that they want that most resonates or complements with their life.

And our collections, they're usually curated by price point because that's where most people start when they think about gifting.

They're like, okay, so I have a budget, I have a set dollar amount per head, and this is how I'm going to go about my corporate gifting.

But we've noticed that corporations are using their budgets as a way to have alignment and values, alignment with the folks that they want to do business with.

So we've started curating collections that help them further in advance that values based relationship that customers want to have with their employees and with their clients.

So we have collections like women owned business collection.

We have a collection called the small business collection of just specifically small businesses.

We have what's called a Happy Planet collection where you can send a gift and the gift itself can be redeemed to help plant a tree in Tanzania or mangroves in the evergreens or one of my new favorite ones as well too is you can sponsor a baby elephant in Africa with one of your gifts or you can help sponsor a mother who is one month postpartum as well too.

So the way that we think about gifting is not necessarily just on the vector of price, but also on the vector of impact.

What's the level of impact you want to be making and what is the values that you want to be mutually advancing between you and your customer.

So this approach helps reduce waste out there and just takes one tiny little sliver off of all the waste that we're doing with corporate gifting and continues to build that tighter, more intentional human connection that you were referring to earlier.

Impact, are you meaning like how much has been donated?

How many trees we planted impact that you don't have?

Hard question because you have so many ways to do that, but maybe you have a way of measuring them.

We absolutely do.

We do.

It's our holiday season.

But keep your eyes peeled.

In January, we release our annual social impact report and we do some fun with it.

We do like a little unwrap so folks can see how much impact they've helped us drive for the past year.

So it could be a women owned business, could be bipoc owned business.

They could actually have products themselves that are curated or made with sustainable materials we've planted.

I want to make sure I get the stat right because we have quite the amount of.

There it is.

Okay, cool.

We have so far helped plant my last.

Where'd it go?

Oh, there's about 34 central parks worth of trees.

So to quantify that, that's about 620,000 trees that we've planted and because of our reforestation processes and projects, we've actually been able to help sequester just shy of about £50 million of carbon.

We've also helped remove over 175 pounds of ocean bound plastic.

So that's plastic that's running through riverways that will eventually find its way out to the ocean.

So we want to get rid of that big blob in the middle of the ocean.

And then we've also helped remove just shy of about 60,000 pounds of mid ocean plastic.

So plastic that's already found its way out there and into the world.

So when we think about quantifying the impact we're making collectively with our customers, the environment is one huge area of opportunity for us.

The one thing we haven't figured out how to quantify yet, and if you have ideas, we're open, we're open to open sourcing.

This is how to quantify the advancement of the relationship and the strengthening of the relationship that our gifts and our approaches have had with folks who are using loop and tide to help facilitate and foster deeper, stronger, better relationships with folks.

So we're thinking maybe there's some like sentiment analysis out there with the thank you notes or something like that.

The time it took for somebody to redeem a gift, I don't know.

But we're open to ideas for how to quantify the human impact, that human connection quotient that we just quite haven't put our fingers on yet, but we're getting, we're getting there.

Yeah, that's really, really, really incredibly difficult.

Right.

Like I'm in the process of writing a book about trust.

And just to define the word, little neat little word, trust, it's so complex and there's so many factors that go into it.

But while I can't help you right now to figure out how to measure the impact of the actual gift, how it has on relationships, let's just stay with that for a second because one of the elements of that relationship is trust building.

And you can actually use that to that gift or that branded item to increase the trust.

Can you walk us through maybe even those four quadrants and explain how trust is built in each of them?

Ooh, I love that.

Yes.

So when we are referring to the four quadrants, we're talking about the, the gifting matrix, if you will.

Okay, great, excellent.

So yeah, so at the end of the day, gifts do not inherently build trust.

Just want to put that out there.

You can use gifts to help advance trust or to Spotlight trust.

But gifts themselves do not inherently build trust.

And so we saw folks using gifting as a way to build trust, establish a relationship, and move that relationship to a deeper, faster level than we've ever seen before.

Which is great.

The space boomed at that point in time.

It was really fun to see the, the revolution kind of come to fruition during that.

During that time, however, we started to see a misuse and an overuse of gifting in such a way that folks just assumed that they sent a gift and they'd build the trust and they'd automatically have the relationship locked into place.

And that just isn't the case.

Like, it really, what happened was it started.

It started to feel a lot like bribery.

And folks really started to pick up on the fact that it was a give to get.

It was a transactional way of conducting themselves in businesses.

And so when folks really started to examine the intent, the why behind why a gift was sent, they started to realize that it wasn't substantial, it wasn't substantiated in anything that had to do with trust and actually wanting to build a meaningful relationship.

So when we help folks start to explore what you're trying to accomplish in the relationship, are you establishing trust from the beginning or are you deepening trust, or are you rebuilding trust?

There's like three distinct camps that we help folks kind of segment their actions into.

That helps them be a lot more critical on what they're sending and of course, more importantly, why they're sending that.

How are they using a gift to again establish trust, deepen trust, or rebuild trust that's been lost?

Then they start looking more closely at that and they're like, okay, great.

We now understand the mechanisms by which we're trying to establish, like, work on our trust with somebody.

Now.

Then we lay over, okay, how familiar are we with this person?

Then we overlay, okay, how much, how familiar are they with our brand?

And that helps folks start to build a really meaningful way of applying a gift to again, help facilitate trust in those three camps.

A really good example of this actually is a customer of ours, Caraway Home.

They are an incredible quickware company.

We love the products that they use, but we also love how they use loop and tie.

Um, so they use loop and Tie for any sort of service recovery situation.

So a customer receives an item, the item didn't arrive in a way that felt, you know, up to the brand standards of Caraway.

So what they do is they apologize for this, they immediately remediate the situation and on top of it send a gift to this person to show, hey, we are so apologetic for the situation.

This is not this service that level that we wanted to bribe for.

You let us help like rebuild the trust that's been broken in this situation.

And in this case, actually they don't send more Caraway Home items.

They send what we would consider a more general loop and tie collection so that this person gets to have something that isn't just a token of Caraway Home in their brand.

It's actually a token of someone caring a lot about the person who was on the receiving end of a less than satisfactory experience.

And that has actually helped their customers feel closer to this brand.

Because the brand isn't just trying to put their brand first and foremost.

They are trying to actually put the relationship first and foremost.

And that has seen a significant impact in helping them rebuild their trust with their customers.

When it was a really like, there's a tough situation where trust could have been completely lost and unrepairable.

I love how they do that because the integrity is sort of fragile here.

Right where we were expecting as a customer, we're expecting this beautiful pot.

Yeah, it came damaged or whatever.

The thing is.

So all my trust in, in their competence and how reliable they were as a company and the integrity, I thought they had completely sort of gone out the window because at this point we're very fragile with our trust.

But then that little we, we make it up to you, we rectify the situation and then give a little token of appreciation.

Like love how you pointed out that it wasn't a branded gift, but it was more like a token of appreciation or just a little, hey, we really appreciate you, customer.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I personally fundamentally believe that this world would be a lot better place if all of us took just one moment out of our day to genuinely see somebody and recognize that and celebrate that.

And I think Caraway Home has a very similar values alignment where they just need to take that moment to just help someone feel seen in a moment that can feel really frustrating and disempowering.

And they do a really good job continuing to reinforce, hey, we see you, we value you.

And here's a little something just to acknowledge that in you and what we.

See in you and that Takes trust to a whole nother level.

Right.

Because before we sort of trusted them on a feature basis or knowledge basis, but now we're connecting with something that like.

Like emotion.

They respect me, they have empathy.

They really.

Yeah, we were just building an emotional connection there.

That's right.

That's really awesome.

Exactly.

It's exactly it.

So thank you for sharing that example.

If someone's listening to this and they think I really wanted to do these things, and it's great that I know, you know, should I send a branded item or a gift?

But how can you build those into, let's say, a sales process?

Yeah, maybe then after that or when is a good.

What's a good value at some points?

Because that changes through the process as well, right?

Absolutely.

And also one thing I always highlight for folks is that the customer life cycle and the employee life cycle actually look very similar to one another.

When you are in the process of recruiting an employee or they're going through an onboarding process as well with you, it looks uncannily similar to the lifecycle that a customer has during their vendor evaluation and then their onboarding process and their renewal process.

So keep in mind that when I also frame up specifically this customer lifecycle management, that your employee lifecycle is, like I said, uncanny.

Very similar to the journey that your customers go on.

So whenever we help customers understand what's the right time to add a gift to the customer life cycle, the first thing we do is help them audit what are critical milestones in your customer relationship where trust, to your point, is a vital ingredient to continue to advance, to continue to deepen or continue to recover, or where is there a moment in time that is worth celebrating the human that you're working alongside with?

And so we kind of deconstruct sales processes.

And not unlike what you and I've talked about already with Bradbury, we find that the least valuable place to add a gift in the customer lifecycle is what we call the cold door openers.

This is like, hey, in exchange for a five dollar Starbucks gift card, can we book a meeting with me?

Like, these tactics are gone.

They're lost, forgotten.

I hope for forever.

People know that, like, the quid pro quo is just not worth our time and energy.

And as much as I'm a huge Starbucks fan and coffee drinker, I just, my time is really valuable and I just don't have time to sit through a pitch that I just am not going to end up buying a product for.

And so we try to dissuade Customers from actually using this as that like cold door opener, intro style conversion point.

Instead, we ask them to examine that pre sale life cycle and understand what are critical times in here where somebody has championed for you or somebody has helped establish trust deeper within their organization or is just a time worth celebrating.

More often than not during that pre sale relationship, we find that your champion is worth celebrating when they have gotten one of their internal stakeholders, especially the decision maker, on board and really excited about this.

It's also a great point in time too to send a gift to celebrate the contract, right, Closing.

Not just that the contract closed, but that the relationship is taking things more seriously.

You know, we're got, we got legal involved.

That relationship is very legit now.

You know, we're, we got a contract saying that we're official.

Um, and so with that in mind, you give folks the opportunity to celebrate that relationship and the formality of that relationship with something that feels informal but also really personal and really intentional.

And then of course, customer onboarding.

What a great way to integrate somebody into your culture than to give them a little something to say, hey, welcome, we're so glad you're here, or give someone something to celebrate the end of the milestone of onboarding.

A lot of companies, especially tech companies, have like a 90 day window where critical things need to be implemented, trainings need to happen, a certain set of features need to be adopted, and that's a great time to celebrate somebody completely stepping into this new realm and adopting all of the features, functionality and of course practices that you know will help them be successful.

And then of course after that onboarding period, you have a critical timeframe where the touch points of your team is probably less frequent, but the usage of your platform, your services is actually in that go time, right?

This is when results are starting to come to fruition.

And this could also be the point in time where service blenders start to happen, right?

And so you need to have these customer.

Christina Garnett calls these customer escalation processes both for good things and for bad things.

Too often companies have customer escalation processes for bad things, but customer escalation processes for good things.

When your customers are out there evangelizing you on LinkedIn or on social media, when your customers are recommending you, sending referrals your way, these are all things to help escalate and celebrate that relationship that your customer is signaling is really valuable to you.

What a great time to send a little gift to just say, hey, thank you so much for sending over those five referrals they're fantastic fits for our company.

We can't wait to dive in with all these folks.

Or hey, you know what?

That wasn't exactly us putting our best foot forward.

You know, we can do better.

We know we can do better.

Here's a little something to help brighten your day after you were on the receiving end of something that was less than satisfactory.

And again, these little things are just the culmination of your company essentially saying, I see you, I value you, and that's all we can do.

And the gifting, again, is not the thing that solves the problem.

The gifting is the thing that helps facilitate the solution to the problem, which is your why.

Yeah, always start with your why.

That's, that's definitely one thing I really learned today.

And one thing that comes to mind is a lot of my customers do customer case studies.

Like after someone spend an hour on an interview with you and gave you a customer, you know, testimonial.

That would be a great time to send a gift.

It's a great time to send a gift, right when, especially when someone's giving you something, it's a great time to give them a little something in return.

Again, just to acknowledge that they went out of their way for you.

And not everybody has to do that.

Awesome.

Now to wrap us up, what is a book that has changed your life in the last that you've read?

Maybe in the last six to 12 months?

Oh, that's an amazing question.

Is this a question specifically to business books?

So most people do mention business books, but I had a few recommend something completely out of the realm of business, but it really impacted them as a person and became a better business person.

So all books are open.

Okay.

Okay, so I will intrude MK fashion answer both the business side and the non business side.

Okay, so on the non business side, game changing book.

I'm still in the process of reading it because it is a very in depth, intensive book.

But it's called the Origins of Our Discontents.

And this book actually starts to highlight the caste system that is actively unfolding here in the US because of demographic, socioeconomic status.

The likes very similar to the caste systems that originated, you know, in India and around the world.

So that book has really started to shape my mindset and understand the hierarchy of systems that exist that we just don't pay enough attention to in the US and then another book as well too.

It's a very, very popular book.

But Atomic Habits, such a good book.

But it started, I mean the one fundamental Shift in that book for me was he was talking about runners in the very beginning.

It was like what does a runner do?

How does a runner think?

And then you are a runner.

Just make decisions as though you are a runner.

And so that mindset of I am the thing that I desire to be, so start acting like that, show up in spaces as that thing and you'll.

You are the thing.

Like you just suddenly are the thing.

And it's pretty remarkable.

So love that atomic habits.

As a person who is a creature or habit, I thought it was really good to help me put some specificity around the habits and why habits are really helpful for me.

Yeah, absolutely.

Love that book.

I'll check out the cost book.

That's a really interesting suggestion.

Very interesting.

It's one.

It's a hard one to like get into at the end of the day if you've had a really tough day.

But you.

But it's worth really deconstructing and dissecting what it is we're especially here in the US experiencing at this very moment with our political systems.

But I think many folks in many different countries around the world are taking a closer look at the construct of their society and their involvement in helping to build a better, more perfect place to exist in.

Yeah, I truly enjoyed our conversation.

Thank you so so much for sharing a really deep insights and practical examples of how to use gifts and branded items to build relationships, build trust.

If anyone wants to be in touch and has questions about that, how can they go about reaching you?

The good news is there are very few of us get liters out there in the world and there are literally no other mks Getlers out there in the world.

So you can find me on any social platform.

Yes, including Blue sky at mkgetler.

I'd say the fastest way to get in touch with me is actually through LinkedIn.

So just find me MK Getler Portskova and yeah, let's connect.

Send me a DM jump in my comments, whatever works best.

So yeah, I'm here and help.

Happy to be a facilitator of human connection with one another and helping to foster and build trust within one another.

Perfect.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Bye bye bye.

We got a.