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Newsletter #813: The “Send a Holiday Gift Worth Talking About” Issue

[Welcome back to the Damn, I Wish I Thought of That! newsletter. This is text of the great issue all of our email subscribers just received. Sign yourself up using the handy form on the right.]

If the holiday gift you’re sending to clients and prospective customers is unremarkable, why bother sending it at all? Trust us, nobody needs another shrink-wrapped holiday basket.

A few ideas to get you thinking for next year:

1> Make it interactive
2> Make it useful
3> Make it charitable
4> Check it out: Save The Words

1> Make it interactive

Give a gift the whole office can get involved in. We love Slack and Company’s “Snowsuit Slacky” holiday card. The goofy mailing includes a cutout of Slacky, which recipients are encouraged to take a picture with around the office and upload to their microsite, SlackySnaps.com. It’s simple, fun, and something a bunch of people around the office can get in on.

The lesson: If your gift is quietly used by only one person, you’re missing out on a bunch of word of mouth around the office.

Learn more: SlackySnaps.com

2> Make it useful

It’s never a bad idea to give a gift that your fans and customers can actually use. Design firm Smith & Robot sent subtly branded Moleskine notebooks as holiday presents. It’s a great gift from an agency — not only does it reinforce the concept of creativity, but it’ll also be used and saved for months.

The lesson: Great gifts are ones that keep on giving. When you’re handing yours out, make sure it’s something your customers will hold on to.

3> Make it charitable

Help your customers give a gift to someone else who could really use it. GSW — an agency who specializes in healthcare advertising — created a virtual card that lets you make a donation to the charity of your choice. And while their holiday card had high-tech features, a more straightforward version is to simply make a donation on behalf of your customers and let them know about it.

The lesson: Instead of trying to come up with a gift you can buy that won’t be overlooked, try spending that energy and creativity helping the people on your holiday list help others.

Learn more: GSW

4> Save The Words

Save The Words is a project by Oxford Dictionaries to save words that are in danger of language extinction. Through the project, you can adopt words like “eicastic,” “psalloid,” and “suffarcinate” by pledging to use them as often as possible in your everyday language.

Check it out: SaveTheWords.org

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