My First Swag

I remember back when I received my first press release... oh, what heady times those were back in late 2006. And like the borderline narcissist that I am, I made it all about me.

Well, another one of those times is here. I am sort of like Kathy Griffin that way.

You see, I finally got my first swag. So it basically took almost 2 and a half years for things to progress from press releases to someone actually wanting to send me something.

I have a feeling aside from some review copies, this may be the last time this happens, because this post is going to burn that bridge.

I made sure that the woman at the E-PR firm knew beforehand that I was all about disclosure. She said that was no problem.

I don't think she knew how much disclosure there was actually going to be. Truth be told, I probably didn't know either.

Now, if you hadn't realized it by now, I am cheap. Really cheap. So naturally I leapt at the chance to sample some free as-of-yet unnamed Doritos. (The naming process is part of the Doritos Guru contest that pays 25 grand and 1% of the future net sales of that flavor).



I remember back at the beginning of my sophomore year of high school, I was sitting in a class and we were supposed to introduce ourselves to our fellow classmates and being the epic wit that I am, I stated that I had eaten so many bags of Cool Ranch chips over the summer that I met Jay Leno. That's how much I've enjoyed them over the years.

OK, it seemed witty at the time.

So naturally when offered free snack food, I grabbed it. I mean, it was the first swag I'd ever been offered (which means that no, I haven't been a paragon of blogging ethics and virtue over here, merely I had never been given the chance to take anything period).

Now here is the funny thing: they sent the chips and the media kit to me overnight by courier service. I don't know how much that cost, but I admire the effort.

If I was a little more full of myself, I'd say they went to all that effort because I am super important and influential. But I am not any of those things, so it seemed a little extravagant to me.

But in the end, perhaps it was worth it... after all, I did mention the contest they wanted me to talk about. So it is official. My price for talking about anything is now one dollar and 29 cents retail. But turning that much swag into a blog post having much more to do with me with just a small dash of the actual work that the swag was supposed to produce. That is priceless.

(Now I wonder when Mastercard is going to give me that buck 29.)

Tags: doritos, swag, mastercard, integrity, doritos guru, kathy griffin, contest