Our competitors gave away pens & candies, we gave each participant a $195 air quality monitor. Why did we do this?

How can you spend your marketing budget in the most impactful way? That question has always mattered to us at AirGradient. Since we don’t engage in paid advertising, we’re always looking for meaningful ways to use our resources. So when the Air Sensors International Conference came to our home country, we thought it would be a great opportunity to put that into practice – and do something a little unusual.

Rather than giving out pens or shirts, we gave every participant an Open Air monitor. At the conference, I was one of the team members at the booth distributing them – and during those days, I can’t tell you how many times I was asked why? Why are you doing this? What’s the catch? For us, doing this felt like a win-win:

• Participants received a meaningful tool to help them understand the air quality in their own context.

• The organizers partnered with us in a way that helped spark greater interest and engagement in the event.

• We got to add more open data points to the AirGradient Map, helping make local air quality data more visible and accessible.

Unlike a pen or a shirt, which often ends up forgotten or tossed, we wanted to give participants something that would last, and something directly connected to our mission.

This approach made it possible for people to not just hear about our mission, but actually experience it firsthand. That’s what AirGradient is all about, which is why we made sure our slogan — “Open Data, Real Impact, No Secrets.” — was highlighted throughout the conference.

Each monitor came in a goodie bag, along with a thank you letter that encouraged recipients to share the data from their monitors. We included this with the hope that people would make their data public, helping others understand local air quality too.

That way, attendees weren’t just bringing home a monitor for themselves — they were bringing one home for their community too. Because real change can only happen when data is shared and used to inform local action, whether that’s through influencing policy or simply helping a neighbour understand what’s in the air they breathe.

In addition to the monitor and the thank you letter, the goodie bags also included a snack — dried namwah bananas. While I was distributing the bags, someone commented about how the bananas seemed like a random addition. While it may seem like that, we wanted visitors to enjoy something authentic from where our company is based, so we reached out to one of our community members from Northern Thailand — George.

George (pictured above) is the owner of Organic Moon, a family run micro-farm near Pai, a small town in Northern Thailand. They produce dried namwah banana snacks using a burn-free farming practice – contrary to what most farmers in Thailand currently do. His work reflects the kind of local, practical solutions we believe in, the kind that not only support healthier communities but also help reduce pollution at the source. It was a small detail, but like everything else we prepared, it had a purpose.

Looking back, everything we prepared — from the free monitors to the thank-you letters to the dried bananas — was our way of showing what we care about. Preparing for our first conference as a team was about making sure each part had meaning and reflected the values we’re trying to build on: openness, community, and impact. In the end, we wanted to offer something that would stick. Something that speaks to who we are, what we stand for, and how we hope to contribute. As we think about future conferences, we’ll keep asking ourselves how to make the experience meaningful for the people we hope to reach.