Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Try, Try Again.
Well, now that the election madness is over, I finally realized how close to the holidays we all are. This season is still considered to be one of the most important sales windows for retailers. Here in New York, there are no malls but more and more chain stores. I avoid the big Three (Macy's, Bloomingdales, Lord & Taylor) like the plague. They are so crowded and have terrible service. This year I'm going to try to have all of my gifts purchased early. I've already bought one - a book on Italian villages for my stepmother.
One cliche that we dust off this time of year is the enormous amount of bad presents that are given for the holidays. I'm not talking about a gift that is off the mark - wine for an alcoholic, chocolate for a diabetic, horizontal stripes for a large person. I'm talking about gifts that are just plain bad - as in items that have no usefulness and are truly just a waste of resources. Like little tchochkes or cheap cosmetics - two of my least favorite things to get, and I've received them all. In general, one should try to give a gift that is wanted and useful to the recipient (and don't give them something because YOU'D like to receive it either).
Business gift-giving is something that I have paid keen attention to ever since my first job at a very small custom publishing company. I was the administrative assistant and my bosses asked me to find some ideas for nice gifts. Unfortunately, all I had to go on were the catalogs that become ubiquitous this kind of year - chocolates, dried fruits, and peanut brittle in various assortments. Now, I am extremely picky, so if someone were to send me one of those things, I'd find someone else to pawn it off on.
In my mind, there are several types of business gift-giving: en masse, thank you/valued client, holiday, and marketing campaign. I'll think of snazzy alliterative categories later. For now, let me define them.
1) En masse gift-giving, also known as promotional giveaways, are small inexpensive items that are meant to be given away to hundreds or thousands of people. They can be given away to any customer that walks into a store; at an event or trade show; or meant as "leave-behinds" on sales calls.
2) Thank You/Valued Client gifts are meant to show customer appreciation - either for a regular customer or a new customer that has done a great deal of business.
3) Holiday Gifts are given for general customer appreciation or marketing purposes, but centered around a holiday - usually the end of year holidays.
4) Marketing gifts are given away to support a specific product or promotion that you wish to draw attention to.
Just as you can have a bad marketing campaign, you can also give bad business gifts. In the best case scenario, people will just throw away the gifts and not think of them. In the worst case scenario, clients will be turned off by your lack of creativity or taste, or impersonal approach.
Would you like to avoid that? Sure, everybody wants to come up with opinion-shaping campaigns and promotions that paint them in a favorable light.
In the next four posts, I'm going to try to tackle each of these four business gift categories and give some ideas that you can apply to your own promotions. And of course, if I can help you with that, please let me know :)
PS: I just finished a pitch session for my full time employer for campaigns and promotions that could be created using a very famous identity. The brainstorming really got my creative juices pumping and I'm going to try to keep this going. I hope to have a website to post these ideas to soon so you can get your own juices flowing. Until then....
One cliche that we dust off this time of year is the enormous amount of bad presents that are given for the holidays. I'm not talking about a gift that is off the mark - wine for an alcoholic, chocolate for a diabetic, horizontal stripes for a large person. I'm talking about gifts that are just plain bad - as in items that have no usefulness and are truly just a waste of resources. Like little tchochkes or cheap cosmetics - two of my least favorite things to get, and I've received them all. In general, one should try to give a gift that is wanted and useful to the recipient (and don't give them something because YOU'D like to receive it either).
Business gift-giving is something that I have paid keen attention to ever since my first job at a very small custom publishing company. I was the administrative assistant and my bosses asked me to find some ideas for nice gifts. Unfortunately, all I had to go on were the catalogs that become ubiquitous this kind of year - chocolates, dried fruits, and peanut brittle in various assortments. Now, I am extremely picky, so if someone were to send me one of those things, I'd find someone else to pawn it off on.
In my mind, there are several types of business gift-giving: en masse, thank you/valued client, holiday, and marketing campaign. I'll think of snazzy alliterative categories later. For now, let me define them.
1) En masse gift-giving, also known as promotional giveaways, are small inexpensive items that are meant to be given away to hundreds or thousands of people. They can be given away to any customer that walks into a store; at an event or trade show; or meant as "leave-behinds" on sales calls.
2) Thank You/Valued Client gifts are meant to show customer appreciation - either for a regular customer or a new customer that has done a great deal of business.
3) Holiday Gifts are given for general customer appreciation or marketing purposes, but centered around a holiday - usually the end of year holidays.
4) Marketing gifts are given away to support a specific product or promotion that you wish to draw attention to.
Just as you can have a bad marketing campaign, you can also give bad business gifts. In the best case scenario, people will just throw away the gifts and not think of them. In the worst case scenario, clients will be turned off by your lack of creativity or taste, or impersonal approach.
Would you like to avoid that? Sure, everybody wants to come up with opinion-shaping campaigns and promotions that paint them in a favorable light.
In the next four posts, I'm going to try to tackle each of these four business gift categories and give some ideas that you can apply to your own promotions. And of course, if I can help you with that, please let me know :)
PS: I just finished a pitch session for my full time employer for campaigns and promotions that could be created using a very famous identity. The brainstorming really got my creative juices pumping and I'm going to try to keep this going. I hope to have a website to post these ideas to soon so you can get your own juices flowing. Until then....
