01.

Historically, swag and branded merchandise at Articulate meant whatever was cheapest and fastest, with a logo slapped on top. The intention was there, but the approach was reactive. Whether it was from the People team or the Sales team, there was no shared system spanning orgs that could execute these requests effectively while also delivering high quality goods. Requests came in ad hoc, ownership was unclear, and most items skipped design entirely.

02.

While brand design wanted to be very thoughtful and intentional about swag, some requests were not worth the time spent. One framework or policy wasn't going to work for both a $2 pen and a flagship conference kit. Treating them the same was exactly how nothing got the attention it needed. The new system had to tell those apart from the start, and also have production considerations.

03.

My team and I built a three-tier framework instead of a single swag policy, because different types of merchandise shouldn't be governed the same way. The “Core & Consumable” tier covers the low-cost evergreen basics. The “Culture Builders” tier covers moment-specific items like new hire kits. The “Premium & Conceptual” covers high-touch, campaign-worthy pieces tied to strategic moments like Articuland or On Purpose. Each tier got its own owner split across People, Brand, and Events, and its own SLA, so nobody was guessing how much lead time a request actually needed. Getting the People and Events teams to actually use a tiered system instead of defaulting to whatever vendor was fastest took repeated buy-in over months. When the People team and I rebuilt the new hire kit from something cheap and forgettable into something that actually represented the brand, we created Lumi, a cat/astronaut character (called “Catstronaut”), as the kit's signature piece. Lumi didn't stay confined to onboarding; the character showed up again in Articuland merch and the event's on-site activation, becoming a recurring thread across tiers instead of a one-off gift.