Studio Note #37: Sticker Placement is Earned.

I've produced a handful of stickers since launching VNDR Studios.

That's very intentional.

I come from skateboarding, where stickers have always meant something. Skate companies, wheel companies, trucks, shops, bands. You collected them. You traded them. Most importantly, you actually stuck them on things.

Your board. Your car. Light posts. The back of a sign. Whatever.

Nobody had to explain the value of that placement. If a sticker made it onto something you owned, it had earned its way there.

And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that's a pretty significant distinction between a sticker and most other promotional merchandise.

A shirt has utility. So does a hat, a pen or a water bottle.

A sticker really doesn't.

The entire value of a sticker comes from someone deciding that whatever is printed on that little piece of vinyl deserves a spot on something they own.

That's a tiny endorsement.

In skateboarding, we understood that without ever really talking about it. Putting a particular company's sticker on your board said something about what you liked and the culture you identified with.

Businesses make stickers all the time, but I'm not sure we always think about them the same way.

Slap the company logo on one, maybe add a URL and order 500.

Then they’re handed out.

But handing out 500 stickers doesn't mean you have 500 little advertisements circulating around the world.

Most of them are probably sitting in drawers or got tossed.

A sticker isn't successful when someone takes it.

It's successful when they stick it.

While we have one logo sticker, I've largely approached the VNDR stickers more like little pieces of design than miniature advertisements. The question isn't whether I've included enough information about the company. It's whether I've made something somebody might actually want on their laptop, water bottle or toolbox.

Because putting a sticker on something is different from accepting a free pen.

You're giving a brand a little piece of your own real estate.

That's something the brand has to earn.

So if you're making stickers for your business, there's probably one question worth asking before you send the artwork to the printer:

If you didn’t own or work at that business, would you actually stick this on something you own?

If the answer is no, don't expect anyone else to.