The conference room table is covered in samples. Forty stress balls in company colors. Thirty pens that will end up in junk drawers by March. A stack of tote bags nobody asked for, printed with a logo nobody will remember by Friday.
A marketing director stands over the mess, running her hands through her hair. The trade show is in six weeks. The budget is spent. And somehow, none of it feels like her company. It feels like every other company’s leftovers.
She picks up a mug, turns it over, sets it back down. Somewhere between the vendor catalog and the deadline, the whole point got lost. What was supposed to make people remember her brand is about to make them forget it entirely.
Meet Krisi Lund
Krisi Lund is a Senior Account Manager at Probitas Promotions in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and she has spent nearly two decades solving exactly that kind of problem. She calls herself a brand storyteller who happens to work in promotional products, and the distinction is not a slogan. It is the reason clients hand her their hardest branding questions instead of their easiest ones. Krisi does not sell merchandise. She sells the difference between a pen someone throws away and a product someone keeps.
The Long Way to Grand Forks
Krisi studied biology at the University of North Dakota, a degree that has nothing to do with promotional products on paper and everything to do with it in practice. Biology teaches you to observe closely, to notice the small detail that changes the whole picture. That instinct never left her.
Her real education started in 2008, when she joined Trojan Promotions as a production manager. For nearly eleven years, she sat inside the machinery of the industry, watching orders move from concept to shipment, learning exactly where things went wrong and why. Production work is unglamorous. It is also where you learn what actually matters to a client under pressure.
By 2019, she moved into account management at Probitas, first under the Probitas It Means banner, then into her current senior role. Each step added a layer. Production taught her precision. Account management taught her people. Somewhere in the middle, she stopped thinking of herself as someone who fulfills orders and started thinking of herself as someone who protects reputations.
In 2023, she added a second business entirely. She and her husband started AdventureLund Total RV, a mobile repair company serving Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. It sounds unrelated to branded merchandise until you hear her explain it. Running a hands-on service business gave her something most people in her industry never get: a client’s-eye view of what trust actually costs to build and how fast it disappears.
The Business of Being Remembered
Ask Krisi what separates good promotional products from forgettable ones, and she will not talk about catalogs. She will talk about intention. “You tell me what you’re trying to accomplish, not just what product you think you need, and I take it from there,” she says. It is a small sentence that reorganizes the entire transaction. The product is never the goal. The outcome is.
That philosophy shows up everywhere in how she works. She tracks two decades of shifting trends, from early 2000s pens and mugs through the Stanley tumbler era to what she now sees rising in 2026: a pullback from tech-saturated gadgets toward retro, tactile, comfort-driven items. But she is quick to separate trend-chasing from strategy. Trends tell you what is popular. They do not tell you what is right for a specific brand.
Her comparison for vendor selection cuts straight to the point. “The cheapest decision and the best decision aren’t always the same decision. That’s true whether you’re booking a flight or choosing a business partner,” she says, describing how she shops six or seven airports before ever booking a flight from her rural home. It is a small habit that reveals a large principle: proximity and convenience are not the same as value, and buyers who confuse the two usually pay for it later.
She is just as direct about mistakes. After a story about her mother’s one cake-decorating disaster becoming the family legend over decades of flawless cakes, Krisi drew the line straight to business. “The good is often expected. The bad is remembered. That’s why consistency matters more than perfection,” she says. It is not a defense of sloppiness. It is a case for building enough trust that one bad moment does not define an entire relationship.
Underneath all of it sits the belief she returns to most often: sameness is the real risk, not boldness. “The brands people remember have the courage to add a little color. Not for the sake of being different, but because they’re confident enough to be themselves,” she says. She is not talking about color literally. She is talking about the willingness to stand out when blending in feels safer.
The Lund Playbook: 5 Lessons
Ask what, not what product. Start every branding decision with the outcome you want, not the item you think you need.
Consistency beats perfection. One mistake will not sink you if you have already built enough trust to absorb it.
Cheap and best are rarely the same choice. Evaluate partners the way you would evaluate any decision with real consequences, not just the closest or lowest-cost option.
Don’t build a beige brand. Confidence, not difference for its own sake, is what makes people remember you.
Your outside perspective is an asset. Experience from an unrelated field often sharpens judgment more than another year inside the same one.
What She’s Building Now
Right now, Krisi and her family are selling their house, dropping from 2,300 square feet into a shipping container and, soon, life on the road. She has been packing for weeks, painting cabinets blue against her first realtor’s advice, and pulled a muscle getting the house ready to list. It is not a metaphor she constructed for this article. It is her actual life, mid-transition, as these words are written.
That marketing director back in the conference room, staring at a table of forgettable samples, is not looking for more options. She is looking for someone who will ask her the right question before recommending a single product. Krisi Lund has built a career, and increasingly a life, around being exactly that person. She does not chase the safe choice. She never has.
Krisi Lund is a Senior Account Manager at Probitas Promotions and owner of AdventureLund Total RV, based in Stratford, South Dakota. She helps organizations create branded merchandise that builds trust and lasting recognition, serving clients who want their brand remembered, not overlooked. To connect with Krisi, visit her LinkedIn profile.
