Spread a Smile: Branded Pencils in Art Packs Posted to Children

Hotline Promotional Products donated branded rainbow pencils to Spread a Smile, a charity supporting seriously ill children. The pencils go into art packs posted out to children taking part in the charity's virtual art club from hospital or from home, and are also used as giveaways at the charity's larger events.

What Spread a Smile do

Spread a Smile supports seriously ill children, including children who cannot get to an ordinary after-school club. Its virtual art club is one answer to that: sessions children can join from a hospital bed or from home, with the materials sent out to them beforehand.

The pencils go in those posted art packs, so a child logging into a session has the same things in front of them as everyone else.

Merchandise that arrives by post rather than by hand

This is the part worth paying attention to if you are buying for anything similar, because a posted pack works differently from a giveaway.

Nobody is there to explain it At an event you hand something over and say what it is. In a posted pack the item has to make sense on its own, which usually means choosing something obviously usable over something clever.

Weight and size decide the postage A pack that tips into the next postal band costs more to send than the item inside it is worth. Work out the postage band first and choose products that fit inside it, rather than choosing products and discovering the postage afterwards.

The opening is the whole experience  pread a Smile noted that the delivery arrived promptly and well packaged, and for a posted pack that matters more than it would at an event, because the packaging is the only presentation there is.

Everyone gets the same thing The point of the art pack is that a child joining from a hospital bed has what the others have. If you are sending packs to a distributed group, whether that is children in different hospitals or new starters in different cities, consistency is doing more work than any individual item in the box.

That last point is the one that transfers furthest. The same logic applies to a welcome kit posted to a remote new starter, or a delegate pack sent out before a hybrid conference. Our guide to what to include in a new starter welcome kit covers ordering for people in different places.

Branding that works as recognition rather than advertising

The pencils carry the charity's logo, and the charity described them as "small ambassadors for our mission" seen by families, hospital staff and volunteers.

That is a different job from most branded merchandise. In a hospital you cannot advertise, and you would not want to. What a logo on a pencil does there is quieter: it tells a family who arranged this, and it tells staff which organisation is working on the ward. Recognition rather than reach.

If you are buying merchandise for a setting where promotion would be inappropriate, that distinction is worth holding onto. The branding should be legible and unobtrusive. A small mark on something genuinely useful reads as an organisation doing its job. A large logo on the same item reads as an organisation using the situation.

Our guide to promotional products for charity events and fundraisers covers ordering on charity funds, and you can see how a Visual Proof works before committing to anything.

Every product page shows its own price at the quantity you enter, its minimum order and its guaranteed delivery date, before you speak to anyone. To see what is available, browse our pens and pencils, our charity and community merchandise or our employee onboarding gifts.