It has been scientifically proven by the pharmaceutical industry: giving people a small "token" or freebie bearing a logo will trigger a recurrent, subconscious, positive reinforcement. It is a tried and true trick that the pharmaceutical industry has been using for years to get doctors to preferrentially prescribe their medicines over their competitors. The chatchkes or "tokens" are usually small items of a nominal cost: pens, paper pads, pencil holders, clocks, refrigerator magnets, giant clips, etc. The studies have all shown that regardless of the value of the item, the frequency of exposure to the logo-bearing item is what determines its power of reinforcement.
To translate this into canvassing for Barack Obama, my fiancee and I decided that we would make refrigerator magnet "chip clips", bearing the inscription "Vote Nov. 4th!"...
We chose refrigerator magnets because we wanted to use something that was low cost, but would be placed in a "high traffic" area to increase the frequency of exposure. Since most families spend a majority of their waking time in the kitchen or in the living room, we decided the refrigerator magnets would be frequently visible. An additional benefit is that these chatchkes were useful (unlike campaign stickers and pins) and could be easily utilized to hang coupons, school artwork, newspaper clippings, etc.
The refrigerator magnet "chip clips" were cheaply purchased from one of our local discount department stores' kitchen supply aisles for 50 - 98 cents a piece. We then printed up some mailing labels with our logo (also cheaply purchased at the local discount department store), and added some glittery stars and American flag stickers. Voila! Our very own Obama '08 canvassing chatchkes!
The response to these chatchkes while canvassing has been overwhelmingly positive -- I usually tell the person that it's a small token of my appreciation for their spending a moment of their time talking to me. But more importantly, I'm certain that they take it right back into their kitchen and hang it on their refrigerator. Every time the refrigerator door is opened, there it is, reminding them consciously or subconsciously to vote on November 4th for Barack Obama -- and the beauty is that it cost less than $1 and took less than a minute to make! (The other beauty of it is that we're using a pharmaceutical industry trick to help to overthrow the current pharmaceutical lobbyists' stranglehold on Washington D.C.!)
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