Do Promotional Products Actually Work? What the 2025 APPA Data Shows
📊 The Numbers Are In: What 627 Aussies and Kiwis Told APPA About Branded Merch
Every promo supplier will tell you their products work. We would too. But we’d rather show you the data. In 2025 the Australasian Promotional Products Association (APPA) ran two studies at once. One asked 399 people who’d received branded merchandise how it changed their behaviour. The other asked 228 business buyers, most of them micro and small businesses, how they actually spend. Put the two together and you get the clearest picture we’ve had in years of whether this stuff is worth the money.
Short version: it works, and it works better than most digital channels. But the buyer half of the research also shows a lot of businesses are spending less deliberately than they used to, which means plenty of budgets are getting wasted on the wrong products. Here’s what the figures say, and how to make yours count. If you want to turn that data into a product brief, our budget vs premium promotional products guide maps audience, use and budget to a sensible tier.
(You can read the original APPA write-up here. The numbers below are theirs; the opinions on what to do about them are ours.)
🧠 People Remember the Thing on Their Desk
The standout figure: 81% of recipients could recall the brand on a promotional product they’d been given. That beats the recall you’d get from a digital ad or a print piece, and it’s not hard to see why. A banner ad is gone in a scroll. A branded drink bottle sits on someone’s desk for months, getting glanced at a dozen times a day.
What APPA’s recipients did after getting branded merch:
- 81% recalled the brand on the product
- 84% told someone else about the brand
- 77% went on to buy from the brand
- 66% looked the brand up online or on social after receiving something
That 84% word-of-mouth number is the one most people miss. A good branded item doesn’t just reach the person holding it. It gets shown around. The stubby holder that gets a laugh at a barbecue, the tote everyone at the office asks where you got. You’re not paying for one impression, you’re paying for a conversation starter.
🛒 The Bit That Matters: 77% Bought Something
Recall is nice. Sales are better. More than three-quarters of the people APPA surveyed said they made a purchase from a brand after receiving a promotional product from them. That’s the whole game: a physical object that puts your name in someone’s hand and, a few weeks later, tips them toward buying.
The reason it works comes down to something psychologists call reciprocity: give someone something useful and they feel a small, genuine pull to give back. It doesn’t have to be expensive. A pen that writes properly. A reusable coffee cup someone grabs on the way out the door. The usefulness is what does the work. A cheap product that breaks or gets binned burns the goodwill instead of building it, so bargain-basement can cost you more than it saves.
So the takeaway isn’t “buy more merch.” It’s “buy merch people want to keep.” A drawer full of tat that gets thrown out gives you none of that 77%. One good item that survives on a desk gives you all of it.
💸 Where Businesses Are Getting It Wrong
Now flip to the buyer side of the research. Back in 2014, 57% of businesses ran a formal annual budget for promotional products. By 2025 that had dropped to 29.4%. Fewer than a third of businesses are planning this spend properly anymore, and you can feel it in the way orders come in.
On top of that, most buyers now spend under $5,000 a year on merch, and 63% expect their spending to stay flat. Read those two together and you can see what’s happened: a lot of promo buying has gone reactive. No budget, no plan, just a scramble a fortnight before an event to grab whatever’s quick and cheap.
That’s the trap. When you buy in a panic you overpay for rush production, you pick products that don’t suit your audience, and you miss the volume pricing you’d get by planning ahead. The businesses getting real value out of that same sub-$5,000 budget are the ones who sit down in January, map out their events and gifting for the year, and order in a couple of planned batches instead of six frantic ones.
The APPA buyer snapshot:
- Only 29.4% of businesses keep a formal promo budget, down from 57% in 2014
- Most buyers spend under $5,000 a year
- 63% expect their spend to stay flat
If your budget’s flat, the only lever left is spending it smarter. Planning is free. Panic isn’t.
🌱 Sustainability Stopped Being Optional
One of the four big themes APPA pulled out of the research is that sustainability has shifted from a nice-to-have to a primary selection criterion. People are no longer impressed by a plastic trinket that’ll outlive them in landfill. They notice when a product is built to last or made from recycled material, and it changes what they think of the brand that handed it over.
It fits with the recall and purchase numbers too. A reusable drink bottle or a decent tote bag gets used for years, so your logo racks up thousands of views. And the fact it’s not single-use plastic quietly says something good about you. You get the branding mileage and the values signal in the one item. Cheap disposable giveaways get you neither.
You don’t need to overhaul everything to green shirts and bamboo. Just lean toward products with a real second life. If it’s going to get used, it’s going to get seen. And these days people clock whether you cared.
🤝 Digital Speed, Human Warmth
The other themes APPA flagged are worth a mention because they’re a bit of a paradox. Buyers now expect the speed, price transparency and range they get from big online retailers. They’ll compare a promo order to how quickly Amazon ships a phone case. But at the same time, the research points to people valuing genuine human connection more than ever in a world running at AI speed.
A well-chosen physical gift is one of the few things that does both jobs at once. It’s a real object in a screen-heavy world, and picking the right one for someone is a distinctly human bit of thoughtfulness that an algorithm can’t fake. APPA calls the blend of physical and digital “phygital”, where a QR code on a branded card opens a personalised landing page, or a merch pack unlocks an online experience. Fair enough as a prediction of where things head next. But the fundamentals haven’t shifted: pick something useful, brand it well, get it to the right person.
🎯 Turning the Data Into a Smarter Order
Stats are only worth anything if they change what you do. Here’s how we’d read the APPA research if we were planning a promo spend this year:
Pick for keep-ability, not unit price. The 77% purchase figure comes from products people hold onto. Before you order, ask one question: would someone actually keep this? If the honest answer is no, it’s not cheap, it’s wasted. Bottles, quality pens, keyrings and coffee cups all clear that bar easily.
Plan the year, order in batches. With most budgets flat and under $5k, the win is in planning, not spending more. Map your events and gifting moments now, then order in one or two batches to get better pricing and dodge rush fees. Our lead times page shows how far ahead each product type needs.
Let the item carry the branding. That 84% word-of-mouth number rewards products that get shown off. Something a bit unusual or genuinely nice sparks conversations a generic pen won’t. Match the item to who’s getting it. A mining crew and a design studio want very different things.
Brand it properly. All these numbers assume people can actually read your logo. A clean print on the right method beats a cramped, cluttered one every time. Supply vector artwork where you can, and check our printing processes for what suits each material.
Reviewed by Daniel Galpin, Co-Founder at PromoMate Australia
15+ years supplying branded merchandise for Australian businesses, events, schools, and trade teams. Focus areas: product selection, print method fit, MOQ planning, and reducing order risk. Meet the team →
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❓ Frequently Asked Questions
1. Do promotional products actually work?
The 2025 APPA research says yes, and fairly convincingly. 81% of people recalled the brand on merch they were given, 84% told someone else about it, and 77% went on to buy from that brand. Those are strong numbers next to most digital advertising. The catch is that the effect depends on the product being useful enough to keep. A bottle that lives on a desk works; a flimsy giveaway that gets binned doesn’t.
2. What does APPA stand for?
APPA is the Australasian Promotional Products Association, the industry body for promotional merchandise across Australia and New Zealand. In 2025 they ran two studies, one of 399 recipients and one of 228 business buyers, measuring how branded merch affects behaviour and how businesses are spending. It’s the most credible local data on the industry going around.
3. How much should a small business spend on promotional products?
APPA found most buyers spend under $5,000 a year, and plenty spend a fair bit less. There’s no magic number. It depends on your events, your audience and your goals. The bigger issue the research flagged is that only 29.4% of businesses actually budget for it now, down from 57% in 2014. Whatever you spend, planning it beats winging it every time.
4. Why do people remember branded merchandise better than ads?
Because it hangs around. A digital ad gets a second of attention then disappears. A branded bottle, pen or tote sits in someone’s space and gets seen over and over, sometimes for years. That repeated, low-key exposure is what drives the 81% recall figure. It’s also physical, which people process and remember differently to something on a screen.
5. Are sustainable promotional products worth the extra cost?
Usually, yes. APPA named sustainability as a primary reason people now choose one product over another, so eco-friendly options can lift how your brand is perceived. They also tend to be more useful and longer-lasting. A reusable bottle or a decent tote gets kept and used, which means more brand exposure per dollar. You’re often paying a little more for something that works harder, not just something that looks greener.
6. What are the best promotional products for brand recall?
Anything that gets daily use in a visible spot. Drink bottles, reusable coffee cups, quality pens, tote bags and keyrings all perform well because they’re handled constantly and often out in public. The APPA numbers reward keep-ability, so lean toward products your audience will genuinely want to hang onto rather than the cheapest thing that hits your quantity.
7. How far ahead should I plan my promo orders?
Given most budgets are flat, planning ahead is the easiest way to get more from the same spend. Mapping your year and ordering in a couple of batches gets you better volume pricing and avoids rush fees. Standard items can turn around in 7–10 business days, but premium or custom pieces can need several weeks, so the earlier you sort it, the more options you’ve got. Have a look at our lead times page for specifics.
8. Where can I see the original APPA research?
APPA published a summary of both 2025 studies on their website. You can read it here. It covers the recipient behaviour figures, the buyer spending trends, and the four themes they see shaping the industry. Worth a read if you want the full picture straight from the source.