Have you ever noticed when you get your chance to express your preference for political leader every few years that the Australian Electoral Commission prefers to provide half sized pencils for citizens to mark their ballot papers? While the cynics amongst us suggest this is to save money or so that ballot papers can more easily be tampered with by political insiders the reality is pencils are preferred over ballpoint pens or felt tipped markers because they can be left in storage for many years and not lose their capacity to perform their duty. Promotional pencils can sit in a drawer for years until the day when they are needed for an event or to keep a bunch of kids quiet for a few minutes. Then you can be sure the ever effective graphite composite core which makes up each pencil will be ready to mark paper the moment it's brought into action..
When it comes to custom branded promotional pencils there is not much which has changed since the hey-day of the product's invention. The same basic design exists, that is a tube of soft wood with a graphite and clay composite core. The big difference available these days is the quality of the external marking available to promoters with full colour digital logo branding available for many of the most popular models. There are dozens of styles of promotional pencil available.
A recent innovation which has proven popular is called a "mood pencil". Like the famous mood rings of the sixties this product is covered with a special temperature sensitive ink which picks up the body temperature of the user and changes colour depending on the heat radiations it detects. As a cheap giveaway product for kids or even to jaded executives who have seen it all before there are few more interesting products available at the singularly low unit cost.
Pencils are products with which people form simple emotional attachments. It could be a psychological connection with our school days when a pencil case with well sharpened HBs was an essential part of every school kid's daily requirements. And perhaps even today this emotional connection with simpler times still has value to the modern day marketer. A pencil is the strong silent type. Simple and unassuming promotional pencils have as many uses as the written word itself and are a cost effective way in which you can engage all classes of people.