(Tamar Weinberg is a) Schwag Addict

Crocs have been hyped around the world, and for good reason. Thanks to George G. Smith Jr, I am now the proud new owner of the Malindi version of the shoe, and let me just say that they are comfortable, stylish, lightweight, and fun to wear.

Here’s a picture of them:

I’m really hard to please when it comes to shoes. (Contrary to most females on this planet, I own very few pairs of shoes myself.) But I really liked the fact that they don’t add weight to suitcases and that they are easy to put on and off. And I can say with absolute certainty that you don’t need to break into them. They just work.

Further, for someone looking for a good looking shoe for the Yom Kippur holiday, which just passed, there are a LOT of stylish Crocs shoe options for you. Crocs are made of PCCR, which has two benefits. On Yom Kippur, you’re not allowed to wear leather shoes. A lot of people wear white Keds. (They don’t go with black suits or pants.) Fortunately, that’s no longer necessary. You can wear Crocs and actually look like you adequately planned for the holiday, a fact that I actually greatly appreciated last Monday. Another benefit of PCCR is odor elimination. These things don’t smell, and try hard to prevent your feet from sweating. They do a pretty darn good job too.

I always thought I’d grow up wearing sneakers, because that’s what I do. I now know I can mix it up a little bit. Thanks to the door George opened into my world, I’m definitely not done buying Crocs.

Online shoe store Zappos has just about every shoe you ever can imagine. And they don’t stop with shoes. Zappos also is great at marketing itself in every single way possible, from using Twitter to taking care of people in the rain.

At SXSW, Zappos had a limited number of Ogio laptop bags. Here’s one:

They also had some bags for carrying schwag 🙂

For the after-parties, there were shot glasses:

Did Zappos stop there? Nope! When it rained in Austin, they had a large number of volunteers offering to hand out plastic Zappos raincoats to those of us who didn’t come equipped with rain gear. Yes, I was actually one of those people, but the raincoat didn’t make it back home with me.

(Photo courtesy of cogdogblog).

Overall, the Zappos movement is hitting hard, and it’s because of brilliant people (hi Brian Kalma!), a dedicated team, great marketing, and an impressive selection of shoes.

In March, I was pleased to make the acquaintance of several folks from online invoicing site FreshBooks who were handing out one of the smartest pieces of schwag of the event: hangover kits. Naturally, you didn’t have to go get them yourself as they were hanging these little kits on your door so that when you arrived, dazed and confused, back at your hotel, you had something to fall upon for the next morning.

Here’s a picture of me with the FreshBooks team in Austin:

This is a close-up of the hangover kit (or better phrased as “survival kit”):

But that’s not all FreshBooks has done. Sunir Shah, the Chief Handshaker at FreshBooks, told me that they took their creativity a step further at the HOW Design Conference two months later in May. You can see photos of their creative booth (and schwag, too!) by looking at this sweet Flickr photoset. If you want to see more and the execution, check this incredibly awesome time lapse video:

Finally, a little later in May at the MediaBistro Circus, I personally met Saul Colt, Head of Magic at FreshBooks. He had the coolest shoes on (and the shirt I highlighted once before).

The shoes:

And the shirt, once again!

FreshBooks is awesome. They have a compelling invoicing product (which I use), creative marketing minds, and a super team. 🙂