You know these can be a great tool, but you just need to avoid the temptation to go over the top promotional with your imprint space. get your graphics people to create a banner with a nice message and then make your logo smaller so they are not in your face promotional, it will definitely increase the lifespan of these as tools for you.
Like I was saying this are nice to have around and flood the crowd with impressions at an event, thankfully they are low enough in cost to give you ROI based on this alone. Any other takeaways by guests and bringing them home to their kids etc is a big bonus.
I was sold by the cuteness factor and the quick response time I got to my messages, and now I've got 100's of these ready to use as I see fit. The pull out banner is just too promotional to be ignored, helps me feel better about giving something away for free and getting that gift factor too.