USB Lanyards – Old Meets New

Promotional lanyards seem like they’ve been with us forever. If you’ve been to any trade show, conference, seminar or training program at any time over the last few decades then the chances are that you’ll have been given a name badge or ID badge that you can wear around your neck by attaching it to a lanyard!

Typically the lanyards are printed or embroidered with branding that dovetails into the event you’re attending. They’re simple, useful and relatively cheap items that help to reinforce the brand of the company running the event or they can be used to drive a revenue stream by selling the print area on the lanyard to advertisers.

They come in a range of different styles and sizes (the size variant is the width with the smaller lanyards starting at 10mm and typically moving up to a maximum width of 25mm in +5mm hurdles, e.g. 10mm, 15mm, 20mm and 25mm) Prices for promotional lanyards start around 35p each (subject to volume, the complexity of the design and the type of clasp attached to the end of the lanyard).

USB Lanyards

Lanyards (also referred to as neck-straps) are by no means a recent phenomenon. They were first used many centuries ago (often by the military) to attach a whistle, sword or pistol to the wearer’s uniform.

Historians tell us that lanyards were particularly popular with navy or cavalry officers who understandably were much more likely to lose their weapons or whistles if they were not “attached” to them. As their role in the military world diminished (whistles and “pistols” are not exactly cutting edge military tools these days) they have found a new role in the business world securing name badges to conference and seminar attendees!

A more recent development in the fairly narrow world of the lanyard is the USB Lanyard – this novel product combines all the benefits of a traditional lanyard with all of the benefits of a USB memory stick. Essentially it’s a USB stick integrated into the “clip” of the lanyard. The fact that you can pre-load data onto the memory stick and brand both the “clip” (the bit of lanyard that holds the USB memory stick) and the lanyard strap itself makes it an ideal promotional product. By using one of these products you can supply tons of marketing material, seminar notes, speaker slides etc. and simply pre-load them onto the “lanyard” – no more brochures to print, less waste, less transport costs, they’re a more eco-friendly solution and they are very popular with the recipients!

Just like any conventional USB memory sticks USB Lanyards are available in a range of different memory sizes starting from 128MB all the way up to 32GB.