Step into nearly any college classroom today and you’ll spot more than just distracted students. There’s the sea of brand-name water bottles emblazoned with stickers. Laptop cases covered with university logos and club paraphernalia. Backpacks adorned with pins and patches. Crocs with personalized Jibbitz shoe charms. And yes, perhaps even a Labubu keychain or two.

This type of expression isn’t limited to the next generation of professionals and tastemakers. Trade show attendees, concertgoers, commuters, sports fans, protestors, parents, weekend hobbyists – people from all walks of life are embracing personalization in its smallest form.

Data from ASI’s ESP platform underscore the rising demand for personalization-ready products, even amid slower sales and spending hesitancy during the industry’s first two quarters of 2025. Searches for “custom stickers,” for example, climbed 40% year over year for much of 2025. Interest in “pins” rose 13%, while searches for “straw topper” jumped 34% compared with the same period in 2024. The trend is mirrored in consumer habits too; according to Google Trends, Google searches for “stickers,” “pins,” “patches” and “keychain” hit their all-time peak popularity within the past 12 months.

One thing is clear: Once seen as afterthoughts or simple add-ons, “personalized accessories” are now becoming the center of attention for both buyers and end-users.

“To be honest,” says Tommy Gomez, senior director of creative strategy at Brilliant (asi/146116), “sometimes what sells the core product is the accessory.”

If a client is hesitant to do another drinkware campaign, for example, says Gomez, they might be enticed by a water bottle that’s accompanied by a custom sticker sheet, allowing the recipient to pick and choose how to decorate their new item.

Thanks in part to social media, accessorizing has become an aesthetic. And with it, these smaller items aren’t just bits and bobs – they’re ways to create meaning around an item, show off a recipient’s personality and, when done well, turn a piece of promo into a clever keepsake.

In a year where it seems that a bit of play is needed to cut through all the noise, personalized accessories are Counselor’s 2025 Product of the Year.

Creating Meaning With Individuality

Personalized accessories have a rich history in the promo industry. Before technology evolved to decorate fabric at scale and apparel began to dominate the market starting in the 1980s, items like buttons and pins were an easy, fun and affordable way to add a logo and spread a message. (Think of the popularity of political campaign buttons for decades.)

Today, personalized accessories look a little bit different, with the addition of newfangled items like Croc charms or Stanley straw toppers – but at its core, it’s the same stickers, pins, patches, buttons and keychains that helped build the industry in its formative years.

Promo is built on customization – that is, adding a logo to a sweatshirt or tumbler that would otherwise be blank. The ability to further personalize those items (for example, by adding a name or allowing recipients to select from a curated list of options) has grown in popularity in recent years as automation and other technologies have made that process easier.

“To be honest, sometimes what sells the core product is the accessory.” Tommy Gomez, Brilliant (asi/146116)

And with the growth in accessories, the personalization trend has taken yet another step forward, by allowing the recipient to be an active participant in the creation of their item.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen stickers be as popular overall as I have in the past few years,” says Andrew Witkin, president of StickerYou (asi/89791). “And I think one of the really unique drivers is that, fundamentally, it’s just a form of personal expression or business expression.”

Unsurprisingly, social media has played a crucial part in reviving and accelerating this trend. When Stanleys became massively popular in 2023 and people bought them in droves, consumers sought other ways to make their new prized possessions stand out. Special colors and limited editions were certainly one method, but not the only one. An accessory provides room to be a part of the trend, while still maintaining some sense of individuality.

It’s all about choice and feeling like the base item is still your own, says Lindsay Bons, senior business development manager at IDLine (asi/59080).

“For example, with the Stanley trend – if everyone set their pink Stanley down on the table, you would have no idea whose is whose,” Bons says. “So how do you make it personalized? It’s about adding that special touch.”

That special touch can be as simple as adding a straw topper to a favorite tumbler; Kate Oscarson, senior manager and lead imagineer at Counselor Top 40 distributor Quality Logo Products (asi/302967), says this is an often overlooked product category when it comes to personalization that younger recipients love. Slapping a sticker from a beloved brand to the back of a laptop works equally well, and that feeling of participation might be enough to increase the perceived value of both the accessory and the base item.

There’s a phenomenon called the “IKEA effect” – first documented by Psychologist Michael I. Norton in 2011 – asserting exactly that. (Yes, it’s referring to the beloved Swedish furniture store known for self-construction.)

As part of the study, consumers either assembled IKEA boxes, folded origami or built LEGO sets, and then were given the chance to “bid” on the items they constructed. Compared to both non-builders bidding on the same items and the builders themselves bidding on “expert” versions of the same items, researchers found that participants were willing to pay a significant premium for the self-built versions.

In other words, it means that people who had a hand in creating something developed an attachment to the item they created – even something as mundane as a box. Imagine how much more powerful that link could be when it comes to designing something that shows off more personality and meaning.

“If I put my favorite pizza shop or my college on my water bottle, it’s a reflection that that brand means something to me,” Witkin says. “And there’s really nothing more valuable for a brand than if their customers are authentically promoting them.”

Turning an Item Into an Experience

One concrete way that creating meaning has manifested in the promo industry? Event booths that manage to transform an item into an experience.

Sock101’s (asi/88071) event services, for example, have truly taken over their business this year, says Terrin Conway, director of client relations and strategic accounts. The concept is this: The client, with the help of their distributor partner and Sock101, selects a base product and a variety of patch options. Then, attendees can pick out their patches at the event and watch, live, as their selections are pressed onto their item in the location of their choosing.

“You get your gift, but you also get to have a say in how you want it designed, or what patches you want on there,” Conway says. “It has that little bit extra of a personalized touch to it – and I think having that interaction is more fun and memorable.”

The result is more than simply a hat or a pair of socks. It’s the memory of how that item was created – and once that memory is cemented, recipients are likely much more interested in hanging onto the item they’ve personalized (and the branding that goes along with it).

“If I put my favorite pizza shop or my college on my water bottle, it’s a reflection that that brand means something to me. And there’s really nothing more valuable for a brand than if their customers are authentically promoting them.” Andrew Witkin, StickerYou (asi/89791)

“It’s a way for the end-user to stand out, but it’s also a way for the client to stand out on the trade show floor,” says Katie Foshie, a marketing specialist at Counselor Top 40 distributor American Solutions for Business (asi/120075). “The end-users are going to go home with something with that client’s branding on it, but it’s also going to be unique and customized to both them and the event.”

And it’s not always an event setup where this comes into play. Brilliant, for example, recently worked on a campaign for a client who does a massive F1 racing activation. The final merch options were built around classic promo picks like canvas tote bags and T-shirts, but the items featured a racetrack design – and each came with a toy car.

“Brands have been looking to get a little bit more playful,” Gomez says. “We try to add an element of play, and it doesn’t always have to be the brand logo.”

Let’s Play

As Gomez mentions, the accessories trend has been driven by creativity and a desire for a little fun. Certain segments of the industry have already begun to pivot away from large-scale logos emblazoned on the front of a sweatshirt in favor of more subtle branding, like tone-on-tone embroidery or unconventional placements.

The creative shift is particularly noticeable when it comes to a lack of plain logos on items like stickers and patches. Still, the resulting accessories are often anything but subtle.

Take Brilliant’s F1 project, for example, or another custom initiative currently in the works: a Labubu-inspired collectible featuring Reddit’s mascot, Snoo. Labubus – small plush creatures, sold in “blind boxes” that conceal which version the buyer will receive – have become one of the “it” items of 2025. Even this trend is rooted in personalization – people want the character that best reflects their personality, and once they find it, they proudly display it as a keychain on their bags and backpacks.

Brilliant (asi/146116) created a riff on the viral Labubu keychains for Reddit’s mascot, Snoo: Meet the LaSnooBu.

At events, says Conway, attendees also tend to gravitate away from patches that only include the event logo or company branding.

“Most people don’t want their logo as a patch,” Conway says. “People want those more fun, memorable patches – like, ‘Oh, we did this for Christmastime in Chicago,’ or something cuter and more trendy.”

She has been extremely impressed with creativity on the client side when planning activations. For a hot tub spa’s recent event, the client created a “Jet Man” mascot to feature on the majority of their patches. At this year’s summit for American Solutions for Business, held in Napa Valley, most of the patch options were wine-themed.

A recent event for a spa client saw Sock101 (asi/88071) creating a series of patches featuring the original character “Jet Man” that were a hit with attendees.

For stickers, the same is true. What’s been trending among StickerYou clients are stickers that lean into the cultural zeitgeist, says Witkin. For example, during the World Series, the company went viral for a series of quirky sticker designs supporting the Toronto Blue Jays, including “Torrano Beisbol Birds” and “Earth Finals,” that it created in collaboration with a local artist. The designs were a bit off-the-cuff, after StickerYou’s first attempt to show team spirit with a sticker wall outside of the Blue Jays’ stadium landed the company a cease and desist because of its branding – but it was the new sticker designs, the ones with a bit more personality, that landed StickerYou more than a thousand orders.

It works on a smaller scale, too, with an “in my staffing era” sticker that leans into Taylor Swift’s “eras” for employees at a staffing company, Witkin says, or a “You Dew You” sticker branded with the name of a cosmetics company.

“I think we have to assume that anything we’re gifting should be photogenic, Instagrammable and have the subconscious cute factor,” Gomez says. “And I think that’s what the accessories do.” It was social media, after all, that launched the most recent “it” products into astronomical popularity – whether that’s the endless cycle of Stanley tumblers and accessories or celebrities sporting Labubu keychains on their purses.

Instead of staid corporate logos, popular stickers often feature inspired designs and fun sayings, like this quirky design supporting the Toronto Blue Jays that sold more than a thousand orders, or this Taylor Swift “eras” riff for a staffing company. Both were produced by StickerYou (asi/89791).

The “aesthetics” of how something will look on camera, how it will photograph, what the first impressions will be – those are all factors in every single client conversation, Foshie says, whether it’s visiting a hotel before an event to make sure the branding will flow with the space or using a retro six-color ballpoint pen at a ‘90s-themed activation.

And people – in and outside of promo – are still eager for promo items that will meet that need.

Foshie is on her fifth reorder this year for a client whose trade show giveaway of choice is a snack tray that fits overtop a 40-ounce tumbler. It was only when Crocs embraced its “ugly cute” aesthetic – by both enlisting an army of influencers and pushing personalization through its custom shoe charms – that the brand made its massive resurgence. Even at ETS Express (asi/51197), which exclusively sells drinkware, Vice President of Sales Adam Stone sees the importance of the sticker aesthetic with decoration methods and designs that look like a tumbler is covered in stickers.

“Do you want to give them a promotional product?” asks Stone. “Or do you want this to turn into a souvenir piece?”

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