Giveaways. Swag. Promotional items. The terms are interchangeable, but the reality is undeniable: Most trade show tchotchkes are banal to the point of cliché. It's rare to find an exhibitor with giveaways that arouse interest and excitement among attendees. And finding an example of swag that is also rooted in marketers' nuanced insight into their audience and propels attendees to engage with a company's services? That's on par with spotting a rainbow unicorn – and why eBay Inc.'s strategy at the 2021 National Sports Collectors Convention is worthy of a closer look.

But to get to the "why," one must first understand the "who." The many thousands of attendees that gather at NSCC have an unrivaled passion for sports and, of course, collecting. Remember the kid from middle school who had a binder full of baseball cards and could recite every Yankees stat starting from 1956? He's now at NSCC with his own kids, ogling a signed letter from Babe Ruth for sale from one of the more than 600 vendors and lining up for an autograph from former Phillies pitcher Tommy Green. After that, he a few peers, whom he likely met via online fan forums and at other events, will likely find a quiet corner of the venue's food court to talk shop, compare collections, and maybe even negotiate a few friendly trades as they revel in being among like minds.

EBay's impact on this community – and on the sports memorabilia industry as a whole – cannot be overstated. By digitally connecting buyers and sellers around the world, the company completely revolutionized how collectors collect. Instead of combing through countless binders in local antique and hobby shops or crossing their fingers at conventions, buyers could find their personal grails and complete their collections by typing in a few keywords.

Sports Authority
To promote its new Price Guide service to sports memorabilia collectors, eBay Inc. incentivized attendees to buy and sell its own trading cards. Hence eBay's regular presence at NSCC. "EBay's objective for industry events like the NSCC is to get in front of the enthusiast community and connect with them directly," says Brita Turner, eBay's general manager of collectibles. "It's important to meet our customers where they are and listen to their feedback, to understand what excites them, what drives them, what their pain points are – and to deliver against those." As such, the company's exhibit is usually a two-lane show and tell: booth reps answering specific user questions and teaching best practices on things like photography and item descriptions, and attendees enthusiastically describing how they found an impossible-to-get card or piece of memorabilia on eBay.

The Price is Right
Leading up to NSCC 2021, eBay marketers had a new MVP feature to hype. Developed based on feedback from trading card collectors who were eagerly seeking more transparent and reliable pricing and valuation information, Price Guide offers buyers and sellers historic and real-time transactional data so they can get an accurate idea of what a fair market value is for practically any sports or collectible trading card. For example, now if an eBay user comes across a listing for a 1964 Topps brand Rocky Colavito card in mint condition, Price Guide will tell them if the seller's requested opening bid of $599 is fair or wildly inflated for the current market.

For eBay's team of event marketers, promoting and educating attendees about Price Guide now topped the list of NSCC must-dos. Traditionally, in addition to the in-booth banter and informal customer-service sessions, eBay's on-site activities included raffles, handing out physical coupons for $10 off a purchase, and sponsoring an event stage – none of which would necessarily drive much awareness of Price Guide. Team eBay needed a new tactic, and they arrived at one after reflecting on just who their audience is and what gets their hearts pumping.

EBay marketers knew they were targeting attendees who were avid collectors and, more specifically, "completists," i.e., enthusiasts who strive to own complete sets of what trips their trigger, be that every trading card for a team's particular season or the autographs of all the Los Angeles Rams players who were at the Super Bowl. And the vast majority of these collectors were especially fond of eBay, seeing as the company made it easier for them to complete their collections. It didn't take long for the marketers to wonder, "What if we made our own trading cards and used them as giveaways?" That alone would have been clever. But then the team went from the minor to the major league with an additional strategic layer: Give each attendee only one card and incentivize them to use Price Guide and eBay's mobile app to obtain a complete set. The plan was as simple as it was brilliant.

While exhibit house Hill & Partners Inc. got started on a new 20-by-20-foot stand, eBay searched for an all-star to design its trading cards. Its first-draft pick was Scott Keeney, aka DJ Skee, an LA-based music, pop-culture, and sports authority who's partnered with the likes of NASCAR, the Minnesota Vikings, and Topps trading cards and is an A-list celebrity to the next generation of collectors. Seeing as NSCC 2021 would be at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center just outside Chicago, Skee designed hypermodern cards nodding to each of the city's four iconic sports teams (the Cubs, Bears, Bulls, and Blackhawks) that would be randomly given to booth visitors. Should an attendee return to the exhibit with all four cards, they'd then receive an exclusive fifth card, also designed by Skee, by mail.

Trade of the Season
On a show floor laden with 10-by-10s and pop-up exhibitry, eBay's 16-foot-tall back wall topped with a backlit logo and a horizontal band of LED panels had the attention-grabbing pull of a jumbotron. It didn't take long for attendees, many of whom had seen social-media posts about the trading-card giveaways starting a month before the show, to make a 50-yard dash to the booth. One of the first things they spotted was a curved display case filled with signed and authenticated memorabilia from retired Dallas Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith, all of which was listed in auctions that would end at the close of the five-day show. Meanwhile, an adjacent T-shaped element contained a trio of touchscreen-enhanced customer-service stations, including one with a tabletop light tent for taking professional-grade listing photos.


Wild Cards
More than a simple giveaway, eBay's trading cards were part of a larger strategy to drive engagement and awareness of the company's offerings. Before attendees could get a DJ Skee card, they first needed to fill out a brief questionnaire on a tablet to provide their contact information, opt in for a raffle, and verify their eBay account (or create an account, if necessary). Participants then received one of the four trading cards (printed by Variantz LLC), a coupon for $10 off an eBay purchase, and encouragement to use the eBay mobile app and Price Guide to collect the three remaining cards. Staffers stood at the ready to assist attendees through every step of the process, from photographing their cards and creating "Buy It Now" or auction listings to monitoring Price Guide data and ensuring purchases were set for "Local Pickup." DJ Skee was also on hand to sign cards and take photos with excited fans.

Of course, not all attendees felt obliged to jump through eBay's hoops – and eBay was fine with that. The encouragement to use the company's app and Price Guide was just a suggestion. Showgoers were free to buy, sell, and trade cards however they wished, including offline at their favorite table in the food court. As long as eBay was among the topics of discussion, marketers considered it a win. But to stoke interest in Price Guide, the band of LED panels in the exhibit's back wall would occasionally turn into a Wall-Street-like stock ticker that listed the real-time market value of each of the four trading cards.

Whether they acquired the remaining cards on eBay or from organic interactions with their fellow enthusiasts, attendees who gathered all four of DJ Skee's designs returned to the booth to have their collections' serial numbers verified. If everything checked out, their info was collected and they received the elusive fifth, holographic-effect card in the mail shortly after the show.

Counting Cards
To call eBay's exhibit at NSCC popular would be an understatement. Between the giveaways and on-site signing by DJ Skee, attendee lines frequently spilled into the aisle and other booths – and piqued the attention of the venue's fire marshal on more than one occasion. Booth reps distributed all 8,000 trading cards (2,000 of each design) in short order, creating a frenzy of transactions and trades. When the dust settled, 808 attendees were able to claim a fifth card, resulting in what could be labeled a "conversion rate" of 40 percent. What's more, data related to the redemption of the $10 coupons distributed in the booth showed that eBay saw engagement with twice the number of new and inactive users compared to the 2019 show, a testament to the campaign's resonance with its audience.

Empirical evidence aside, Turner points to another indication of eBay's success. "Historically, the most common questions we receive at shows such as NSCC pertained to card values – 'How much should I sell this card for on eBay?' and 'Is this card worth a purchase? What is its real-time value?'" Turner says. "However, with the introduction of Price Guide, we no longer received these questions. We accomplished our goal of empowering collectors." And that's why eBay's exhibit marketers are card-carrying strategists. E