BLP BRAND CAMP / PEOPLE. IDEAS. POSSIBILITIES.
Seven gatherings bringing customers, supplier partners, and the BLP team together to discover what’s possible.
By Bob Lilly Jr.
A customer knows their audience. A supplier knows what a product can do. Put them together with the BLP team, give them room to explore, and the conversation gets interesting.
Could we customize that on-site?
Would this work for our employee event?
What if we changed the material, the packaging, or the way someone receives it?
That is the purpose of BLP Brand Camp: bring people and possibilities together, then help customers take useful ideas back to their companies.
We have now held Brand Camp seven times. Each gathering gives our customers, supplier partners, and team an opportunity to step into the same room, share what they know, and discover something together.
CONNECTION
The people make the possibilities bigger
Our supplier partners bring deep knowledge of their products, materials, and decoration techniques. They can explain the details, answer questions, and help customers see possibilities they might otherwise miss.
Our customers bring the context that makes those possibilities meaningful. They know their employees, their clients, their upcoming events, and the challenges they need to solve.
The BLP team helps connect the two. We can explore how a product fits an audience, how an event activation might work, and what it would take to carry an idea through production and delivery.
That collaboration is what makes Brand Camp valuable. A product on a table becomes the beginning of a conversation about something a customer wants to accomplish.
CREATIVITY
Get your hands on the idea
At BLP Brand Camp 2026, held at Toyota Stadium in Frisco, guests could explore merchandise, meet supplier partners, and experience customization firsthand.
At the pen bar, the choices started with individual components. Pick the colors. Choose the pieces. Put them together.
For someone planning an event, participating changes the questions they can ask. How would our guests respond? Which choices would we give them? Where would this fit into the day?
They have experienced the activity themselves. They can begin to picture it with their own people.
At the tumbler station, guests could choose drinkware and personalize it with stickers. At the hat bar, caps, patches, and a press showed how individual choices become a finished piece.
JOY
There should be some joy in discovery
There is a reason we want to share the selfies, group photos, and moments between demonstrations. They belong to the story.
Brand Camp brings customers, suppliers, and the BLP team together around work that leaves room for creativity and fun. Choosing a patch, comparing ideas, or taking a photo together gives people a chance to connect as well as talk business.
We want guests to enjoy that process. To ask the extra question. To try something they had not considered. To leave with an idea they are excited to share with their team.
The merchandise matters. So do the people who help you see what you could do with it.
FOLLOW-THROUGH
Help the ideas make it home
An event can give you plenty to think about. Remembering which supplier had a particular product, or why you photographed it, can be harder a few days later.
For the 2026 gathering, the Brand Camp Favorites App added a way to keep those details together.
Guests could connect their discoveries to suppliers, capture product images and voice recordings, and save interests or request samples and pricing. BLP used the captured information to prepare AI notes sent within two to three days of the event.
The purpose was practical: give guests and our team a useful starting point for the next conversation.
A saved image becomes more valuable when it travels with the reason it caught your attention.
BRAND CAMP IN THE NEWS
A purpose worth carrying forward
In its Spring 2025 profile of BLP, Tune In Texas asked Bob Lilly Jr. about the thinking behind Brand Camp.
“Brand Camp was born from a desire to deepen engagement with our clients and introduce them to the forefront of promotional products.”
Bob Lilly Jr., quoted in Tune In Texas, Spring 2025, page 13.
PPAI also covered the 2025 gathering at Toyota Stadium, highlighting supplier participation and a live activation. Read PPAI’s Brand Camp coverage.
WHAT COMES NEXT
Seven gatherings, and more to explore
Seven editions give Brand Camp a history. They also give us a reason to keep asking how the next experience can be more useful.
What should customers have the opportunity to discover? How can our supplier partners share their expertise? What can we do to help an idea move from an event conversation into a real project?
Those questions will help shape what comes next.
To the customers, supplier partners, and BLP team members who have been part of Brand Camp: thank you. You bring the knowledge, curiosity, and energy that make it meaningful.
What could we create together?
Want to explore BLP Brand Camp, ask about a future gathering, or bring an idea from it to your own event? Let’s talk about what you have in mind.
