Holiday gifts for clients

[Nick Griffin]

I couldn’t agree with Bill more. Over the years we’ve ran into big corporate situations where we were told not only that individual gifts could not be accepted but gifts of any type, including deli platters and such had to be taken and given to homeless shelters because they would not, under any circumstances, be accepted. Every situation is different and you have to be aware of your environment.

Two thoughts on what we do these days. Who’s to say what our items are worth other than what we say? Virtually nobody who monitors these sorts of things stops to think what it costs for us to have the item custom-embroidered, come in a custom-printed box, get hand packed and hand wrapped. Even when the postage paid is right there under their nose, no one has questioned (yet) that the ITEM is under $10? (This becomes especially absurd on the items we send to the UK and Europe where the postage alone is more than twice the cost of the item.)

Second, my philosophy has always been to start at the top and that includes with gifting, uh… I mean holiday promotions. It’s one thing — and potentially easy to criticize — when our “item” is just going to a product manager or a VP of marketing. It’s entirely different when the same thing goes to the CEO, the Exec VP, most departmental VPs, their managers and even select secretaries and admin. assistants. We make interfacing with our clients on multiple levels a goal, no where more so than during the holidays.

My final (for now) gift story. One of our clients uses us for content creation but insists on using their own firm for content delivery. Last year my partner happened to be in their office when an OBSCENELY LARGE fruit and gift basket was delivered — we’re talking something which was easily in the $200+ range. When I later subtly brought this up with one of the VPs and made the quiet remark that they must consider you a VERY profitable customer (in contrast to the numerous lower cost providers we had suggested), he simply replied, “Oh no… they just really like us.” Unlike Bill’s story of the magnum, sometimes even the obvious fails to get attention.

Live and learn, indeed.

[Todd Terry]

Back to the subject of cards… I’ll grouse for just a sec about something I don’t like… which is “e-cards.”

We usually get a couple of them a year from either vendors or customers. I just got one today that was actually very nice and well done, a complex flash piece that I know they put a lot of work into. They said something to the effect of “Because we are a creative company, we decided to do something more creative than a card… click here.”

BUT… on a scale of 1-100 on the “this is personally for you,” it gets a zero.

The email wasn’t even addressed to me specifically… I was a blind recipient so I’m sure I was one of a massive list of recipients.

To me, this does more harm than good. I don’t want to think I’m just a name on a list (although we all are, of course), and this really magnifies that. While we might not hand-address our envelopes like Walter does (no one could read my writing), we do individually print the envelopes one at a time, and do hand sign them. Some people get cards signed by the whole staff… for those who have only personal dealings with me alone, I sign their card by myself (the same goes for the other people here). The cards we send are designed by us and custom-printed in short runs of a couple hundred, and this year they had a hand-assembled insert as well. I didn’t figure it up because it’s not important, but by the time you include the postage it’s probably costing us two or three bucks to send someone a card… not including the value of the concept and design time. Of course it’s not about the money, not at all… it truly is the “thought that counts.” And being a recipient of a blind mass emailing kinda shows me the only thought was whether to click the check box by my name.

My own family knows I have long held a similar feeling about gift bags… and in fact they now purposely give me gifts in fancy-schmatnzy gift bags just to hear me say, “Awwww, you almost cared enough to actually wrap it.” 🙂

Happy holidays all…

T2

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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Bob Cole]

One of my clients sends me a signed card and a little paper tree ornament which says that they’ve donated to a charity in my name. Last year they gave me a choice of charities, which was great.

[Patrick Ortman]

I’ll share what we typically do, just to add to the conversation.

Mostly, we try to do something small but fun for current, a few past, and a very few prospective clients. Nothing too fancy, this year it was a card plus custom M&M candies in a tin. Everybody likes candy, right?

Now, rarely, and only when a client is also a friend- which does occasionally happen- I will personally go out of my way to find them something they will really appreciate. For instance, a client took me out for scotch tasting after a very intense tv commercial job this summer. It was a lovely gesture, and so I wanted to repay that in kind. He got one nice- not insane, but nice- bottle of scotch.

That said, I would never do something like this if I didn’t know the guy, knew he’d appreciate it, that it wouldn’t violate any ethics, etc. And really, after he was so gracious with me, I’d have sprung for it even if he wasn’t a decent sized client this year. Gotta match class with class, you know?

Happy Merry Christmas, everybody!

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http://www.patrickortman.com
Web and Video Design