Promo Pen Goes Viral Thanks To TikTok
Last week, TikTok user Sam Hart – aka @thesam_show – posted a video about the promo pen she received when she signed the lease on a new apartment. A self-described “pen enthusiast,” Hart said, “This is the best pen I’ve ever used!” and took a handful.
@thesam_show♬ original sound - Sam Hart
Fast-forward a few months later. Hart called the leasing office to ask where they got the pens so she could order her own supply. Upon finding out this particular pen was available only in bulk as a branded promo product, she lobbied her employer to order a supply for its own promo, pitching them as “the best pens you will ever use.”
Hart convinced her boss to order a supply for her office, and they were an instant hit. She says, “I am the most popular person in the office because I am the person who procured these pens.”
But then her office supply ran out, as well as her access to ordering promo at work, so she took to TikTok to ask the internet for help.
Hart doesn’t name the pen in her original video – which now has 1.3 million likes – but later in the comments and in a follow-up video, she reveals that it’s the BIC Intensity Clic Gel Pen and provides a demonstration. Followers then started trying to find their own, but the particular pen she seeks is not available in retail settings – at least not by that name. Its retail sister is the BIC Gelocity pen.
Koozie Group (PPAI 114187, Platinum), the No. 10 supplier in the inaugural PPAI 100, is the exclusive supplier of the BIC brand to the promotional products industry in the U.S. and Canada. The company says the BIC Intensity Clic Gel Pen, available in five solid colors and five translucent colors, was introduced in 2002 and has become one of its bestselling products.
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Koozie Group estimates that sample requests for this item have tripled thanks to the hype and reports that one distributor received 1,200 sample requests in just 48 hours.