Nineteen Australian campaigns and the promotional pieces that became keepsakes
Nineteen named-brand pieces from fifteen years of Sense2 production — Google flashing pins, Nike sneaker USBs and SB pins, Mercedes-Benz leather, metal and tissue, branded umbrellas, Doncaster BMW co-branded pens, Sony beach towels, Tiffany glass bottles, Telstra activations, Westpac fortune cookies, Saatchi & Saatchi pen and 'Nothing is Impossible' notepad, Samoa Tourism's Beautiful Samoa tote, Adventure Tourism Victoria's Vienna glass cup, Clinique calico, YOU CAN sunglasses for Sony Foundation, and Porsche's laser-engraved vacuum bottle. The brief, the spec, the keepsake — and what made each one worth keeping.
We usually keep our clients' names confidential — but these nineteen projects were just too good not to share. They're the pieces that walked out of the room, were photographed, were carried home, and ended up on a shelf or a desk years later. What makes the difference? A brief that treats the object as carefully as the campaign around it, and a willingness to spend a little more per unit on a few less units.
The gallery
A keynote-night keepsake we built in the exact shape of the Google word-mark — four LEDs and a hidden switch under the back-pin.
A sales-team giveaway too good to leave in the conference bag — a two-piece sneaker USB with the Swoosh in colour and a lace-clip lid.
A small enamel pin for a Nike SB skate launch — gold on black, sharp edges, and it ended up collector currency on skate forums.
Full-grain charcoal leather, debossed star, polished steel buckle — built to feel as premium as anything Mercedes itself sells.
A separate Mercedes piece — brushed aluminium instead of leather, etched logo, wire-tether for the rough handling that airports give a tag.
Retail-grade gift wrap for a launch activation — soft-touch matte black on premium tissue, the star and word-mark registered exactly.
Built to survive a Melbourne morning — wind-tested fibreglass ribs, double-vented canopy, branded handle wrap, white star on black.
A hand-over gift left in the glovebox of every new BMW delivery — dealership on the cap, roundel on the barrel, and a click worth a listen.
350 GSM combed cotton, full-bleed sublimation in three colourways, embroidered hem — and they sold out at staff price the same week.
Invitation-only client night — we matched the signature blue to a single Pantone tolerance and finished each piece with a fabric tag, not a price hangtag.
12,000 units across five colourways, over-printed in UV-stable inks, with a sample that still holds air two years later.
How do you make retirement savings charming? You hand-bake a fortune cookie with the campaign line printed on the foil sleeve.
An ad-agency desk pen — 500 units, white pad-printed wordmark on a black Z720A barrel, the kerning fought over until it sat right on the curve.
When the brief is the agency's own tagline, the bar is high — A5, 50-leaf 80GSM, script lettering scaled to the page.
A natural-cotton A4 tote for Samoa Tourism's flagship inbound campaign — screen-printed in PMS 2685 so the Polynesian pattern detail sang.
Reusable glass + orange silicone for a state-government activation — we proofed black and white print and landed on white for contrast.
A 100-unit calico run for a Clinique conference — natural-cotton weave variations kept as a feature, black single-pass screen.
1,000 UV-rated sunnies for Sony Foundation's youth-cancer charity — the scribbled YOU CAN mark pad-printed black on white, temple-side.
200 units of laser-engraved Mirage vacuum bottle for Porsche — the mark cuts through the black powder-coat to a polished steel finish underneath.
Inside each piece
Google Australia
Custom flashing pin shaped like the Google word-mark
Google Australia wanted a keepsake people would actually wear home from the keynote. We made the pin in the exact proportions of the Google word-mark, full-colour print, four little LEDs inside, and a switch tucked under the back-pin so it stayed clean from the front. The room lit up the moment the keynote opened. A year later we still see the pin clipped to lanyards at industry events — which is the only honest measure of whether a giveaway worked.
Nike Pacific
Bespoke USB drive shaped like a Nike sneaker
Nike Pacific needed something the sales team would actually carry home from the offsite. We custom-tooled a two-piece sneaker USB with the Swoosh in colour and a removable lace-clip lid. Years later some of them are still sitting on the desks of the buyers who first received them. Nothing fancy in the brief — just a refusal to ship the obvious thing.
Nike SB
Gold-and-black enamel SB swoosh lapel pin
Nike SB asked for a wearable for a skate-launch night — small, sharp, the kind of thing a kid pins to a hat and keeps. We went hard-enamel rather than soft, gold plating on a black base, and tightened the die so the swoosh's tail came to a clean point instead of the usual rounded smudge. The pins were handed out at the door. Inside a week they were trading on skate forums. That's the test for a piece like this: did anyone want a second one? They did.
Mercedes-Benz
Charcoal-leather luggage tag, debossed with the three-pointed star
A test-drive event piece for Mercedes-Benz Australia. Full-grain charcoal leather, the star and word-mark debossed rather than printed, a polished steel buckle, and edge-stitching matched to the pitch of the seat-stitching in their flagship sedan. It's the kind of object you can hand to a customer who already owns three watches. We wanted it to feel as premium as anything Mercedes itself sells — and the moment we knew it had landed was when a dealer principal asked, in a meeting, where he could buy more.
Mercedes-Benz
Machined aluminium luggage tag with etched logo and wire loop
A different Mercedes commission, a different feel. For a dealership-network rollout the brief asked for something that could survive being thrown around by airport handlers without softening at the edges. We milled the tag from a single piece of brushed aluminium, etched the star and word-mark rather than printing them, and replaced the leather strap with a steel wire loop that won't fray. Heavier in the hand than you'd expect for the size — which is exactly the point. The leather tag is a gift; this one is a tool.
Mercedes-Benz
Branded tissue paper for retail gift-wrap — three-pointed star grid
Mercedes asked for the kind of gift wrap you'd expect from a luxury retailer, not from the giveaway table. For a launch activation we printed soft-touch matte black on premium tissue stock, set the three-pointed star and the word-mark in a repeating grid, and held registration to the sort of tolerance you'd brief for packaging, not promo. It's the detail you don't notice consciously — until the wrap comes off the gift and the recipient has already decided this is a brand that cares. That's the entire job.
Mercedes-Benz
Branded umbrella for a test-drive activation — black canopy, fibreglass ribs
A hand-out at a Melbourne test-drive activation has to do one job: make it home. We built the umbrella around fibreglass ribs (they flex instead of snapping in a gust), added a double canopy vent so it doesn't invert in the wind off the bay, wrapped the handle in soft-touch black, and printed the star and word-mark in white on the canopy in scale. A test-drive guest who gets caught in the rain on the way back to their car will remember exactly two things: the car, and the umbrella that worked.
Doncaster BMW
Co-branded executive pen — dealership and BMW
Doncaster BMW wanted something to leave in the glovebox of every new delivery — a thank-you the customer would actually use. The pen had to carry the dealership's name without overshadowing BMW itself. So we did twin engraving — dealership on the cap, BMW roundel on the barrel — and obsessed over the weight and the click until it felt as high-end as the cars themselves. You can tell within thirty seconds of holding it whether a pen has been thought about. This one has been.
Sony
Family of branded beach towels in summer-launch colourways
Sony's summer-launch retail kit came with a beach towel that had to live past the launch weekend — past Christmas, ideally. We picked 350 GSM combed cotton (heavy enough to feel like a towel, not a promo), full-bleed sublimation in three colourways, and an embroidered hem that lifts the piece from giveaway to keepsake. Stores reported the towels sold out at staff price the same week they hit the back room. That's the difference between something binned at the airport and something kept on the shelf for ten years.
Tiffany & Co.
Limited-run glass water bottle in Tiffany blue
An invitation-only client night for Tiffany & Co. Australia. The bottle had to read as Tiffany before it read as merchandise. We matched the signature blue to within a single Pantone tolerance, screened the word-mark in a single foiled pass, and finished each piece with a fabric tag rather than a price hangtag. Guests took them home in the original Tiffany boxes — which is the moment you know a piece has crossed over from giveaway to something the brand could sell.
Telstra
Beach ball capsule for a national summer activation
A national summer activation for Telstra. The brief asked for something that could survive a Bondi morning and still be visible from the lifeguard tower. We over-printed in UV-stable inks, used a thicker PVC than the spec called for, and shipped 12,000 units across five colourways. The original sample still inflates flat two years on — we keep it in our showroom as quiet proof that a giveaway can be built to last if you're willing to put the spec there.
Westpac & BT (New Zealand)
Individually wrapped branded fortune cookies for a KiwiSaver push
Westpac and BT briefed a take-away piece for a Westpac KiwiSaver acquisition push in New Zealand. The challenge: turn a retirement-savings sales line into a moment of charm. We hand-baked individually wrapped fortune cookies, printed the campaign card directly onto the foil sleeve in the bank's serif and Westpac red, and dropped in the writers' line — “Fortune favours the well prepared. Join or switch to the Westpac KiwiSaver Scheme today, you'll thank yourself tomorrow.” A retirement-savings brief became a piece people opened, smiled at, and shared.
Saatchi & Saatchi
Custom retractable executive pen — model Z720A, white pad-printed wordmark on black barrel
Saatchi & Saatchi briefed us in 2016 for a small-batch executive pen — 500 units, the kind of thing creatives actually keep on their desk. Black Z720A retractable barrel, silver clip, white pad-printed wordmark. The tolerance had to be tight: pad-printing a serif logo onto a curved surface is exactly the place where kerning goes ugly fast. What you're looking at here is the artwork proof we sent Saatchi for sign-off — the kind of back-and-forth that happens long before the press fires. Most clients only see the finished product; this is the moment a piece is born.
Saatchi & Saatchi
A5 notepad printed with Saatchi's tagline 'Nothing is Impossible'
'Nothing is Impossible' has been Saatchi & Saatchi's compass since the 80s — it's the philosophy of the agency, not a slogan they bolted on. So when they briefed a 500-unit A5 notepad in 2019, the line had to do itself justice. Script lettering at the top of the page, scaled so it sat as a header without dominating the working surface; 50 leaves of 80GSM offset stock; padded edge clean enough to live on a creative director's desk. The proof you're looking at is the version we sent for sign-off. The pad below it is the part that disappears as it's used — which is the whole point of a working notepad.
Samoa Tourism Authority
A4 cotton tote bag — 'Beautiful Samoa' campaign mark in PMS 2685 purple
Samoa Tourism's 'Beautiful Samoa' campaign is the country's flagship inbound-tourism mark — a script 'Beautiful' over a block 'SAMOA' filled with traditional Polynesian patterns. We screen-printed it onto natural-cotton A4 totes in PMS 2685, a deep aubergine purple chosen so the pattern detail sat richly against the cotton's warm undertone rather than getting lost in it. Tourism boards live or die on the quality of their giveaways: a tote from a campaign activation either ends up in the kitchen drawer or in someone's holiday memory. This one was built for the second outcome.
Adventure Tourism Victoria
Vienna 345mL reusable glass cup — orange silicone band, screen-printed ATV logo
Tourism Victoria's adventure-tourism arm wanted reusable drinkware for their state-government promo activations — the Vienna 345mL glass cup with an orange silicone heat band and lid. We worked through two print options on the proof, black on orange and white on orange, and landed on white for the cleaner contrast. Reusable drinkware is the single biggest format shift in promo merch since 2018 — single-use plastic is out, glass-and-silicone is in. The only way to get a clean print on a curved silicone band is to proof it in both colours before committing to the screen.
Clinique
Calico double-handle conference bag — 140 GSM natural cotton, black-screen Clinique mark
Cosmetic-counter brands like Clinique know merch is a touch-point with high standards — the rest of their brand is luxury packaging, so the bag has to keep up. 140 GSM hand-woven natural calico, black single-pass screen, double long handles, the natural fabric variation kept in (Clinique briefed it as a feature, not a flaw). A 100-unit short run for a conference: small batch, high finish. The hardest briefs come from beauty brands — the merch has to live next to luxury packaging without looking cheap. The fix is honest material: natural calico, with its weave variations, beats a printed-up faux-luxury fabric every time.
YOU CAN — Sony Foundation Australia
Malibu Basic sunglasses — white frames, 'YOU CAN' graphic pad-printed on the temples
YOU CAN is Sony Foundation Australia's youth-cancer charity arm — and the scribbled-out 'YOU CAN' typography is the brand's signature. In 2018 we made 1,000 Malibu Basic sunglasses with the graphic pad-printed on each temple, 45mm × 8mm print area, black on white. The Malibu was chosen for its UV-rated lens: sunnies for kids in chemo who'd been told to stay out of the sun. Charity merch has the highest stakes in promotional products — a piece that doesn't pull weight cheapens the cause. The YOU CAN sunnies were exactly the opposite: a kid wears them, and the message walks itself into every photo.
Porsche
Mirage 116329 powder-coated vacuum bottle — black, laser-engraved Porsche wordmark
A 2021 Porsche merchandise order — 200 units of the Mirage powder-coated vacuum bottle. Laser-engraved rather than printed, so the Porsche wordmark cuts through the black powder-coating to reveal a shiny-steel finish underneath. When the brand is Porsche, every choice has to read as engineering. Print would have been adequate; laser engraving was correct. Same physics as a watch back-engraved with a serial number — the kind of detail that earns a place on the desk of someone who already owns the car.
Why we’re publishing these
Most of our work stays confidential. The senior buyers we look after trust us partly because we don't put their logos on a portfolio page. Anonymised stories — a global luxury house, a Group of Eight university, a major retail bank, a Federal Government department — make up the bulk of our full case-study gallery. The nineteen pieces here are the exceptions. They were always meant to be public. They were worn at events, given out at activations, photographed on retail floors. Sharing them lets us point at thirty years of work without ever pointing at a file we shouldn't.
What these pieces have in common
What links a fortune cookie, a sneaker USB and an aluminium luggage tag? Each one was briefed as an object first and a marketing piece second. Each one was over-specified — a thicker PVC, a tighter Pantone match, a debossed mark instead of a printed one, a sublimation pass instead of a one-colour screen. Each one was costed at a per-unit budget that made the marketing team a little uncomfortable in the brief and proud of the result. We wrote about this shift — from giveaway to keepsake — in our 2026 corporate gifting trends report. If you're briefing a campaign now, our seven-question brief template is the document our account managers actually use.
Want a piece like one of these?
The path from “we need a keepsake for the keynote” to an object like the Google flashing pin is shorter than most people assume. Three things make it possible: enough lead time to make something custom rather than something off the shelf (six to ten weeks for a moulded piece, four to six for a sublimated soft good), a per-unit budget that survives the bill of materials of the spec you actually want, and a partner who's done it before and will tell you honestly when the spec and the budget don't reconcile. Start a quote if you have a brief in hand. Get in touchif you'd rather talk it through first. Or browse our premium picks for a sense of the spec floor we work from.
Frequently asked questions
Can Sense2 design custom-shaped promotional products like the Nike sneaker USB or Google flashing pin?
Yes. Custom-tooled merchandise — moulded shaped USBs, custom-die enamel pins, bespoke flashing badges, brand-shaped power banks — is one of Sense2's core production capabilities. Tooling lead time is typically six to ten weeks for a moulded piece and three to five weeks for an enamel die. Minimum runs start at 250 units for moulded shapes and 100 units for enamel.
Are these named brand pieces still in production?
The exact pieces shown were produced as one-off campaign runs for Google Australia, Nike Pacific, Nike SB, Mercedes-Benz, Doncaster BMW, Sony, Tiffany & Co., Telstra, Westpac/BT, Saatchi & Saatchi, Samoa Tourism Authority, Adventure Tourism Victoria, Clinique, Sony Foundation Australia (YOU CAN) and Porsche. We can't reproduce them — they belong to those brands. We can produce equivalent custom-shaped, custom-tooled or custom-decorated pieces for your campaign at the same level of finish.
What's the difference between a stock branded product and a custom-tooled one?
A stock branded product takes an off-the-shelf item from a catalogue and decorates it with your logo (screen-print, pad-print, embroidery, sublimation). A custom-tooled product is manufactured from scratch in a shape that doesn't exist elsewhere — your brand becomes the object, not just a print on it. Custom tooling adds 4–10 weeks of lead time and a one-off mould cost ($800–$3,500 depending on complexity), but the per-unit price at scale is often comparable to a high-spec branded stock item.
Do you have case studies in our industry — finance, university, government, FMCG?
Yes. Our anonymised case-study gallery covers a global luxury maison's Australian launch, a Group of Eight university welcome kit, a major Australian retail bank's conference gift, an Australian Federal Government sustainability campaign, a national sporting code's fan capsule, an ASX-listed FMCG brand's urgent pop-up, a teaching hospital donor gala and a global creative agency's studio merchandise. Most of our work is anonymised at the buyer's request; we share full sector-by-sector references on a quote call.
What's the typical lead time and minimum order for keepsake-grade promotional products?
For stock items decorated to a high spec (debossed leather, embroidered apparel, sublimated soft-goods, foil-printed packaging) — three to five weeks from brief approval. For custom-tooled or custom-shaped pieces — six to twelve weeks, depending on tooling complexity, decoration method and freight. Minimums start at 25 units for premium stock items and 100–250 units for custom-tooled pieces.
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