Back in medieval times, a combination of historical lore, ignorance and the desire to be safe, "just in case" caused the citizenry to offer gifts of food and trinkets to the "dragons" that lived in the surrounding areas. Even today as part of the ritual new years celebration, Chinese shop owners leave offerings to the dragon as a talisman of good fortune in the year to come.
Tradeshow & conference managers along with encouragement and participation from sales and marketing professionals also engage in the modern equivalent of leaving offerings to the dragon. They feel like they MUST give away printed marketing collateral and product literature in order to have successfully appeased the dragon of doing their job and giving attendees a "takeaway" item. Unfortunately, just like dragon lore of old, this desire to hand out printed literature is based on tradition and fear much more than any kind of value/benefit equation.
Data from post show surveys clearly shows that over 93% of all literature handed out a tradeshows & conferences never leaves the hotel room. So it doesn't get read by anyone but maybe the hotel maid on the way to her wastebasket. So why do all of these smart people continue to feed the literature dragon? Mostly because they don't know of an alternative and they are afraid to upset the tradition of handing out literature which is institutionalized to such a degree that sales staff and booth workers cannot conceive of NOT handing out literature because "it's what we have always done".
So companies that exhibit at tradeshows and run conferences continue to feed the dragon, paying printing charges, shipping, storage, management, drayage and other costs just to feed a dragon that immediately burns it all up with no benefits.
