X is for Xmas Cards

Being filled with good cheer throughout the year usually means you're slated to create your company's holiday card. Some might find this honor a curse, I, however love creating corporate holiday cards. These are usually cards signed by the whole staff and sent to vendors, members and/or clients just after Thanksgiving, and for anyone who doesn't think it's important to say "Season's Greetings" to the customers who paid for the holiday luncheon -- think again!

Pictured is Emily Richardson, age 5

I find so many companies are missing the opportunity to engage existing and prospective customers with their brand at year's end. They would rather farm out the task to the receptionist who will invariably pick the first design off a generic sheet of lack luster cards. The only impression that leaves is -- we're lazy. I've created several holiday cards on shoestring budgets including one where I dumped a box of Ivory Snow detergent on a tree in the middle of autumn to create a frosty scene and used a coworkers' little girl as a model. Years later, the full-service insurance company I created this for, still selects partners' children to share the warmth and wonder of the holiday season with its customers.

The Business Journal, 2003

Another of my favorite cards is one of the ones I created while at The Business Journal, the Triad's leading business newspaper. In my role as Advertising Promotions Manager, I conducted quarterly research to find out which sections our subscribers enjoyed most. I discovered our readers loved knowing which executives got promotions and hearing about companies' new hires -- a section called "People on the Move."

With the help of the newspaper's designer, I created a hilarious card inspired by this popular section with lots of holiday puns that our publisher loved. He even sent them as his own personal cards that year with free trial subscription cards -- many of these people are still readers!

In this post's title above, you'll find a link to a card and poem created for Beacon Technologies, and below you'll see the first card I was asked to create to benefit Habitat for Humanity. Ho, ho, ho.