Eight Australian campaigns and the promotional pieces that became keepsakes
Eight named-brand pieces from fifteen years of Sense2 production — Google blinking pins, Nike sneaker USBs, Mercedes-Benz luggage tags, BMW co-branded pens, Sony beach towels, Tiffany glass bottles, Telstra activations, Westpac fortune cookies. The brief, the spec, the keepsake.
A promotional product can be two very different things. It can be the plastic keychain pulled out of a satchel and binned at the airport. Or it can be the object on the shelf that, ten years later, still carries the brand. What separates the two? Almost always: a brief written by someone who treats the piece as a brand artefact, a partner who treats production as craft, and a willingness to spend meaningfully more per unit on meaningfully fewer units.
The eight pieces below are physical objects Sense2 designed and produced for named Australian campaigns over the last fifteen years. Some were keynote-night giveaways. Some were dealership hand-over gifts. Some were national activations at a 12,000-unit run. None of them were confidential procurement work — they walked out of the room, were photographed, were carried, were kept. They are case-study photographs of what becomes possible when a brand briefs merchandise the way it briefs film, packaging or print.
Google Australia
Custom flashing pin in the shape of the Google word-mark
A keynote-night keepsake for Google Australia. Custom-tooled in the exact proportions of the Google word-mark, full-colour print, four embedded LEDs and a switch hidden under the back-pin. Attendees flicked it on as the keynote opened. Twelve months later we still see the pin clipped to lanyards at industry events.
Nike Pacific
Bespoke USB drive shaped like a Nike sneaker
Nike Pacific needed a sales-team giveaway that wouldn't stay in the conference satchel. We custom-tooled a two-piece sneaker USB with the Swoosh in colour and a removable lace-clip lid. The team carried it home from the offsite. Some are still on display behind the desks of the buyers who first received them.
Mercedes-Benz
Charcoal-leather luggage tag, debossed with the three-pointed star and word-mark
A test-drive event piece for Mercedes-Benz Australia. Full-grain charcoal leather, the three-pointed star and Mercedes-Benz word-mark debossed not printed, a polished steel buckle, the edge-stitching matched to the seat-stitching pitch in the marque's flagship sedan. The kind of object you can hand to a customer who already owns three watches. We made it to be confused with something the brand sells.
Doncaster BMW
Co-branded executive pen — dealership × marque
Doncaster BMW asked for a hand-over gift to leave in the glovebox of every new delivery. The pen had to read as the dealership's voice without compromising the marque. Twin engraving — dealership name on the cap, BMW roundel on the barrel — and a click that closed with the same satisfaction as a closing door.
Sony
Family of branded beach towels in summer-launch colourways
Sony's summer-launch retail kit came with a beach towel that needed to live past the launch weekend. We sourced 350 GSM combed cotton, full-bleed sublimation in three colourways, and an embroidered hem that lifted the piece into something a household actually keeps. Stores reported the towels sold out at staff price the same week.
Tiffany & Co.
Limited-run glass water bottle in the maison's signature blue
An invitation-only client event for Tiffany & Co. Australia. The bottle had to read as Tiffany before it read as merchandise. We matched the maison's 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.
Telstra
Beach ball capsule for a national summer activation
A national summer activation for Telstra. The brief asked for a piece that could survive a Bondi morning and still be visible from the lifeguard tower. We over-printed in 6 mm UV-stable inks, used a thicker PVC than the spec, and shipped 12,000 units across five colourways. Two years on, the original sample still inflates flat — we keep it in our showroom as proof of how a giveaway can be made to last.
Westpac & BT (New Zealand)
Individually wrapped branded fortune cookies for a Westpac KiwiSaver campaign
Westpac and BT briefed a take-away marketing 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." Each cookie carried the Westpac/BT lockup. A KiwiSaver brief became a piece people opened, smiled at, and shared.
Why we publish named work alongside anonymised stories
Most of Sense2's work is procurement work, and the senior buyers who trust us trust us partly because we don't publish their logos. Anonymised case studies — 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 eight pieces above are the exception: they were always public artefacts. They were worn. They were photographed. They were never confidential. Publishing them lets us point at thirty years of work without ever pointing at a procurement file we shouldn't.
The pattern under the work
What do all eight pieces have in common? Each one was briefed as an object first and a brand vehicle second. Each one was over-specified — a thicker PVC, a tighter Pantone tolerance, 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 uncomfortable in the brief and proud of the result. The economics that made these pieces possible are the same economics that make a $4 keychain forgettable: cut the run, raise the spec, brief for the keepsake.
We expanded on that thesis — the unit-economics shift from “given” to “kept” — in our 2026 corporate gifting trends report. If you're briefing a campaign now, our seven-question brief template is the document our senior account managers actually use to de-risk this kind of work.
How to commission this kind of work
The path from a brief like “we need a keepsake for the keynote” to an object like the Google blinking pin is shorter than most marketers assume. Three things make it possible: enough lead time to custom-tool rather than 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 has done it before and can say no when the spec and the budget don't reconcile.
Start a quote if you have a brief in hand. Get in touch if you want to talk through whether the piece you have in mind is the right piece before the brief gets written. Browse our premium picksif you want a sense of the spec floor we're working from.
Frequently asked questions
Can Sense2 design custom-shaped promotional products like the Nike sneaker USB or Google blinking 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, Mercedes-Benz, Doncaster BMW, Sony, Tiffany & Co., Telstra and Westpac/BT. 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 gallerycovers 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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