Dear Nature Publishing Group,
When I worked in Marketing, I was responsible for placing a rather expensive advertising campaign within your august pages. As a result I developed a good working relationship with one of your advertising reps, who was kind enough to bestow several of your branded promotional items upon me.
Now, the memory stick is great. I tell everyone in my new institute “oh, that? It came free with my last paper”. Ditto the mug. My husband gets lots of comments and questions about the t-shirt I passed on to him after realising that I could actually wear it over my coat. And the red plastic piggy bank is positively adorable.
But the frisbee?
Well, let’s just say that it needs some refinement.
This is an ex-frisbee
We had fun though:
And here’s a gratuitous “isn’t Vancouver lovely?” photo for you to enjoy while you work on Frisbee 2.0
I would be more than happy to test any prototype. And another t-shirt (Medium).
Thank you for your attention
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I’m afraid the standard of freebies these days is not what it used to be. There used to be an award (The Golden Daffodil ) for the best freebie at the Lonodn Online Exhibition every December. They discontinued the award more than 10 years ago because the overall standard had fallen so low.
You should think yourself lucky to get a frisbee, even if it doesn’t work.
Hmm. I also have a complaint. I work for Nature and no-one’s given me a red plastic piggy bank!
What you really want to aim for is one of the blue squeezy-frog Nature Chemical Biology key rings. I’ve worn out two of my three and I’ve now got my beady eye on the apparently abandoned one sitting on my colleague’s desk…
I don’t know if it’s your photos, my computer, NN or my eyes, but your photos seem a bit squished in the mediolateral direcion.
Frank, there has definitely been a trend towards cheap and cheerful. The playing cards that I designed were always popular, and I have an insulated mug from Chemicon International in near constant use on my desk, but there’s a plethora of cheap pens and t-shirts and it’s a terrible shame.
Joanna, this little piggy is from Nature Jobs (I had to check), not quite sure how I ended up with it! There was another one in use in the shared Marketing office as a swear box. I like squeezy stress toy thingies – I have a dendritic cell and a red blood cell one.
Henry, I think it’s just the frisbee.
I’ve often claimed (with no evidence whatsoever) that the quality of freebies at trade shows and the like is a direct reflection of the state of the economy. Given today’s economic climes, I wouldn’t expect much from Frisbee 2.0 if I were you).
Funny, I’ve actually published in at least on npg journal and they didn’t send me bupkus, except a lot of letters haranguing me to hurry up and submit my revisions on time &c.
“one”
Squishy Cow urges you to buy Canadian FBS
No NPG freebie can beat Squishy Cow.
Am I the only person who hates freebies? Probably, although the free USB mug warmer that I got with a chemical order was kind of cool. I was too afraid to plug it in and didn’t have a compatible mug!
Squishy cow roolz ok. There are also horses and probably other animals as well.
FOR SALE:
Large collection of spring-clip paper holders, Eppendorf tube openers, stress balls, keychain flashlights, USB keys (32 Mbytes and smaller), pens (some missing their pocket clips and/or push buttons), highlighters (one triangular in shape), amusingly shaped eppendorf tube water-bath floaties, mugs, T-shirts (some humorous), laser pointers, and similar tat. Please apply to Wintle, c/o International Crap Corp., Toronto-ish, &c. Those wishing to acquire squishy cows and Affymetrix-branded plush pig toys (with amusing “oink” noise) need not apply.
I also have a wide variety of conference lanyards, if anyone’s interested. They’re hardly expensive at all.
I had a squishy pig at some point as well, but I gave it to a postdoc in my old lab when I left. She had had her eye on it the whole time it was on my desk and loved it WAY more than I did.
I have never ever ever had a USB key as freebie. I paid $60 for mine, and the whole world just gets them for free as if they’re stickers. (I remember having a similar discussion elsewhere on the internet a while ago, and if I recall correctly, Maxine had also never had a free USB key. But everyone else was so bored with them. You guys just don’t know what you HAVE! Be happy with it!)
What was the squishy pig selling, bacon?!
I like the triangular highlighters with a different colour on each corner.
The biggest disappointment at the MRS this autumn/fall was the quality of the free chocolate freebies. Only the CSM (Swiss) stall was worth it, all the others had some sub-Hershy muck.
No, I would have found it funny if it did. It was just a random animal toy that didn’t make sense in connection to whatever company was using it. (BioLynx, on the other hand, has plush lynxes which I’ve had my eye on for a while but never managed to snag.. Are you reading this, BioLynx people? I need a lynx! I don’t need any reagents, though. Just toys.)
Poor quality chocolate is always disappointing, Brian. I’m constantly amazed at the popularity of Hershey’s etc. At least it won’t clutter up the environment for hundreds of years though, unlike some of the cheap plastic tat that you see! I’m all in favour of useful freebies like USB keys, mugs, playing cards, pens (if they actually work for more than a couple of days), etc. Piggy banks and stress toys are borderline! My old company used to give away these fuzzy sticky things with big googly eyes that always bugged the hell out of me for being completely useless. Astoundingly popular though!
The best Freebie at the MRS was a Yo-Yo from the International Union of Crystallography. It was definitely more popular with my kids than the ACS Silly Putty. To go with the piles of freebies I have an under-stairs cupboard full of conference bags. A few of these are actually useful – Elsevier (sorry Nature) have a nice line in canvas shopping bags.
Ooh, yes, we did yo-yos too, and calculators and timers. And I can always use a good strong canvas bag or two.
I was at one conference where the delegates’ standard satchel was just the most hideous colours – brown and blue, which can be a good combination in itself, as long as you don’t use tones that bring to mind a neon blue handkerchief sticking out of a dog turd. C’mon, people, give us something we can re-use!
I use conference bags mainly to drag stuff to goodwill, and leave it there, bag and all. They’re useful – I just don’t need more than 2 or 3.
Wellcome did some nice chocolates – wrapped in paper with lovely pictures on. It seemed a shame to eat it.
My favourite freebie was a Chemical Abstracts coffee mug that had a thermo-sensitive patch in the shape of a VDU screen. When you poured hot water in the structure of caffeine appeared.
Oooh, geeky fun!
I got a pedometer and some champagne from Pfizer once. That was a good conference.
Affymetrix is famous for their microarray-shaped dark chocolates. Most excellent.
some champagne from Pfizer
Hm. Pharmas are famous in these parts for sponsoring “seminars”, targeted at (medical) docs, at swanky restaurants in the evening. No, I am never invited.
No seminar required – this was just at the booth. The delegates showed up late, and by the time they eventually arrived, all us reps were already tipsy.
The American Chemical Society was giving out bracelets designed to look like those friendship fad ones that were all the rage a few years ago, yet inscribed with geeky little sayings.
CISB’09 can haz freebies! (Thanks Li-Kim)
Nature Pig, Nature Pig, does whatever a Nature Pig does
Nature pig could kick Squishy Cow’s butt. It also holds all my American dollars (OK, my one American dollar).
Those advertising gifts look fantastic! I only seem to get free pens.
I have two free bags of ‘Total RNA Extraction Kit’ . I’ll swap them for your pens, Wilson.
Thank you, but I don’t need to extract RNA for my research.
You don’t know what you’re missing.
Become and economist. Nothing will be free ever again.
Become an economist. Nothing will be free ever again.
Cath, have you seen the clicky markers that say Nature Network? They are fantastic!
Yes! I have some of those, and some stickers and buttons (thanks, Corie!).
I am intrigued by the CISB freebies. Given that you’ll be doing some knitting / crocheting, maybe you could make some of the friendship bracelets that Jenny mentioned.
Stickers and buttons???? Corie!!!
We’ve run out of the button unfortunately (hope to reorder some soon) and we will be re-ordering stickers. Hang tight Barry.
The Nature Pig is fab, I bet it could beat up Squishy cow too.
I’m going to take a wild guess that u were playing frisbee on either Kits or Jericho beach…
Yup, Jericho. On my first visit to Vancouver, I stayed at the youth hostel right on the beach, and hung out on the beach in the evening with a huge multinational crowd, drinking beer and having a BBQ. With the sun setting over the ocean to the West, mountains to the North, and the city lights to the East, I thought, “I’m going to come back and live here”. So going to Jericho is always special!
Cath: funny, that sums up my first visit to Vancouver too. Although I was in a hotel close to YMCA down town… and my Jericho was one of the abandond beaches down by UBC. Ok, maybe it was not as much as your story after all 🙂
(but I managed to go back and live there for a while…)
btw, I love both squishy cow and NN piggy. Imagine the piggy full with coins….. mmmmm…
Full of American foldin’ money would be better!
cath> really…. bills in a piggy bank? hrmpf. “in my days the coins were all we could collect” 😉
[of course, if I had a piggy bank full of american folding money I’d be one happy post doc – vacation here I come!!! ;)]
The coins go into old pasta jars, and then into the bank once a year. Right before a big vacation, usually. It’s actually quite an effective saving strategy.
@ Cath: yea, the Jericho beach hostel couldn’t be located in a better place. that’s such an awesome experience, kinda makes me miss the BBQs and sunsets in Van in the summer.
Almost forgot about my happy lab rats.
If it helps, it’s all overcast and grey right now.
aww, that sucks, and that also sounds like vancouver. i’m sure it’ll get sunnier in less than a month?
It’s sunny now – not a cloud in the sky. That’s the great thing about Vancouver, it changes pretty quickly!
The CISB freebies (thanks Li-Kim) included those fabric bags that schoolchildren put their plimsolls in, with a metric plethora of NN stickers, notepads and pens, but also reprints of ‘Fifteen Gems of Evolution’ and also facsimiles of the first issue of Nature. As conference organizers also like to promote the area in which the conference is held, I included some leaflets of local interest (thanks to a raid on the local tourist information office).