A carrier bag made out of unusual stone paper material, black pit salt that adds an exquisite taste to cooking and ecological wood shopping trolley chips - these three innovative items are among the 29 winners of the Promotional Gift Award that was held for the tenth time this year.

The Promotional Gift Award is a communication prize that distinguishes extraordinary promotional products, which is organised annually by the Cologne-based publishing company, WA Publishing. An expert jury comprising of Eva Spahn from the Lufthansa WorldShop, Alexander Jusmann from the Commerzbank, Angela Gehrke, Project Manager of the Promotion World/Deutsche Messe AG in Hanover, Michael Mätzener, CEO of the Swiss promotional products agency, diewerbeartikel gmbh, and Michael Scherer, managing partner of WA publishing, met up on December 7 and 8, 2011 to assess the entries.

In total, they had to examine 212 entries from 156 companies. The standard of the items submitted was extremely high this year. A number of interesting products that covered the entire range of the industry strove to win over the attentions of the judges. One trend that was certainly noticeable: Technologies that build a bridge between offline and online. Furthermore, the entries included several standard products with convincing further developments. Last, but not least custom-made designs proved the high potential that promotional products display.

The coveted prizes were awarded in four categories: Ten products won a prize in the category Communicative Products, five in the category Give-aways. Seven promotional products were able to convince in the category Premium Products & Branded Articles and five in the category Custom-made Designs. In addition, two special prizes were awarded for innovative customising technologies. 20% of the entries were received from abroad. A list of the winners is posted on the PGA website.

All winning items will be presented to the visitors of PROMOTION WORLD in a permanent exhibition. The official award ceremony took place at the PROMOTION WORLD on April 24, 2012.