Incentive Awards: Top Tech Trends
September 03, 2008
Finding electronics merchandise that motivates
By Ben Chapman
Electronics: It's the product category that can zap life into hohum incentive programs, and fresh merchandise from leading suppliers is giving yet another boost to this vital arena of motivational merchandise. While most of this summer’s new technology is continuing to evolve along familiar lines, the sought-after product category continues to break new ground in incentives. A look at the electronics coming to market this season shows what really motivates. Digital cameras, GPS, high-end audio, and home theater are biggies, with peripherals and portable electronics rounding out the picture. Though many organizations are facing uncertain business conditions and budgetary pressure on incentives, electronics merchandise is a safe choice for motivational programs because of the category's enduring popularity with participants. "One of the things that is always present is the appeal of electronics in general," says Dave Peer, vice president, client services for Chicago-based Hinda Incentives. 'It's a category that has a ready-made market of people who want to upgrade." The importance of the electronics category is clear to corporate incentive planners like Joan Miller, chief marketing officer at Boston-based Summit Partners, who oversees gifts for business partners at the firm's investment meetings. "At our annual meeting of investors in May, we gave our limited partners Tivoli Audio radios with the Summit Partners logo engraved on top," she relates. For the private equity and venture capital firm, the high-end audio gift is "ideal," Miller says. "Our investors told us they were delighted to receive the radio."
Corporate electronics makers report resilient demand for their merchandise, despite some fiscal pressure on their incentive clients. "Budgets overall seem to be going down a little bit in 2008," says Jimmy Beyer, national sales manager at Park Ridge, N.J.-based Sony Premium Incentive Sales Group. But like other makers, Sony continues to push the electronics envelope in areas from digital cameras to home theater to software: Two new versions of its Vegas Movie Studio high-definition video production suite hit stores in August. It's an exciting departure for the company known for hardware.
Trends in Tech Merch
From iPods to home theater and back again, the electronics merchandise marketplace continues the exciting path of innovation it's been on for the past couple of years. Certain subcategories, such as highend audio and GPS are seeing higher demand than others, with consumers' appetites whetted by technological developments. Boston-based Tivoli Audio is just one
example of the burgeoning high-end audio market, providing innovative electronic incentives for apparel makers like Timberland and retail heavies like Nordstrom's, in addition to financial businesses like Miller's Summit Partners. "In corporate incentives, brand items are key. You can't throw cheap, gimmicky products to an incentive program—it won't feel like an incentive," says Bob Brown, president and COO of Tivoli Audio. "They want quality."
Later this year Tivoli is rolling out NetWorks Global Radio, which receives and plays Internet-based radio content. Meanwhile, portable GPS units are finding
their way into more and more incentive programs, thanks to dropping price points and new features like wireless connectivity from makers like Garmin, Magellan, and TomTom. Gary Slavonic, partner at Dallas-based Premier Incentives, says GPS systems are big. "In Texas we're working on a rewards program for a large energy company. One of the rewards is a GPS, and it's one of the most highly redeemed items in the program."
In the category of flat-panel televisions, TV technology continues slowly to shift away from plasma to LCD, as manufacturers Sony, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, LG
and other makers roll out cheaper, higher-quality LCD units. "We're starting to see more penetration of LCD as the quality improves, but plasma is still popular," Slavonic observes. "Size-wise, forty-two inches is kind of a sweet spot out there." Home-theater peripherals like component cables and power supplies from Monster Cable are attractive additions to incentive catalogs, too, he says.
And digital cameras are still riding a wave of popularity, as new, more sophisticated models with higher resolution hit the market from makers like Nikon, Canon, Sony and Fuji. "Point-and-shoot digital cameras are very popular, and w'e're almost reaching an overkill point with resolution," says Slavonic. "Some of the point-and-shoot category cameras are in the nine- or ten-megapixel range, which can produce images that are too big for many users' computers." Sounds like those users will soon be looking to upgrade their computers, and that’s more good news for electronics merchandise in incentives.
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