Best Branding Giveaway – Mongolian Fortune-Telling Bones
One way to reinforce your message and personal marketing is with a unique and memorable giveaway.  This can be especially powerful when you can find a way to connect it to your firm, name, geography, or topic.

On our law firm marketing blog I’ve written at length about law firms and groups we’ve marketed, building name recognition around particular elements that reinforce their geography, for example, IcelandBrazilEngland, or Florida.

One challenge both lawyers and professional speakers have is how to help our targets remember us later.  Years later, I may remember the presentation but forget the presenter’s name. Strategic giveaways can solve this dilemma.

One of my favorite such tchotchkes was from a Mongolian firm we worked with in 2006.  I know, the mountains of Mongolia seem like the other end of the world, but I met them when keynoting a series of programs on Corporate Brand Management in Bangkok for the Asian Productivity Organization.

I’d asked the Mongolians to moderate one of the break-out sessions following my keynote, and they certainly came prepared. Not just to lead, but to be remembered.   



There is an ancient Mongolian Fortune-Telling game called “Shagai,” which uses goat and sheep ankle bones to tell your fortune, pictured.

You roll, toss, or flick them like dice or marbles, and which sides of which bones land up tell your future, like a very early version of “Pass the Pigs.”  Or, for the 20-somethings, Crazy Bones.  A chart tells your score, see below.

They gave me this set of Shagai divination dice in 2006, but they’re still sitting right on my desk — I just think they’re interesting. (And, if I want to see if “everything will be successful,” now I don’t have to ask my Magic 8-Ball or Ouija Board.)
Six years later?  Now THAT’s a good giveaway.  And, of course, if I ever need a firm in Mongolia, of course they’ll get the call.  We didn’t come up with the idea to give away these dice/bones, but I sure wish we had…


How can YOUR firm come up with something equally powerful?
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(c) 2012 Fishman Marketing, Inc.

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