We’re in love with Christmas cards and we don’t care who knows it
As Christmas 2015 fast approaches, we reflect on the past year, and we’re thankful for all the fun projects we get to work on. One of our favorite client requests is for really cool holiday cards.
Great Christmas cards are great for business
There’s passive marketing and there’s active marketing. Holiday cards certainly fall more in the passive category. They’re about celebrating, not selling, after all. However, when done right, a super cool Christmas card can earn valuable brand recognition along with good will.
Kudos by the sleigh-ful
For its 2014 holiday card, Charter Media (now Spectum Reach) wanted to make a big, bold, fun statement. We created a memorable holiday card, complete with a die-cut Santa ornament. Charter Media’s friends and colleagues popped Santa out of the card, assembled him and hung the ornament on their trees.
Produced by the thousands, these cards combined the wow-factor of a dimensional holiday gift with the affordable postage of a flat card. Santa brought lots of joy that year!
Charter Media Santa has a permanent place on the Toolbox Creative aluminum Christmas tree
These cards were the real dill
For our 2015 holiday card, we went a little deeper on the Christmas bench, spreading the joy and wonder of the Christmas Pickle. Without the worldwide brand recognition and giant marketing budgets of Santa and Frosty, the Christmas Pickle still manages to bring happiness and good fortune to all those who find him. Heck, he does it without arms.
In the spirit of adult coloring books, we sent a holiday card complete with colored pencils to our friends, clients and colleagues. In the busyness of the holiday season and end-of-the-year crunch, it’s nice and therapeutic to spend some quality time coloring. Clients, colleagues and members of the extended Toolbox family young and old brought some color to Mr. Pickle’s world in exchange for the good fortune he brings. Not a bad dill.
A holly jolly infographic
For our 2014 holiday card, my love of Christmas songs and my OCD converged perfectly to create the most thorough visual documentation of the best versions of the best Christmas songs ever created. Want to know how Santa stacks up to Jesus? Want to know if Bing beats Burl for first place? How awesome is the Wham! Christmas song? It’s all there. View the Christmas song roadmap and Christmas song infographic and tap into our Pandora Holiday station here. If the Herb Alpert Christmas song does not bring you joy, I’ll buy you an eggnog latte.
Repurposing with a purpose
Christmas albums are a veritable treasure trove of awesome graphic design through the years. Sadly, they live mostly in dusty bins in the secondhand store. A few years back, we rescued old Christmas records and turned them into one-of-a-kind screen printed holiday cards.
Cleaning out the closet for Christmas
It’s inevitable in our business that some beautifully printed pieces will outlive their usefulness and require a trip to the recycle bin. A few years back, we raided that bin and turned them into one-of-a-kind, handmade holiday cards. These cards were made from 100% stuff sitting around our office — just add a stamp (and lots of handwork). Clients were thrilled to see their pieces beautifully reborn just in time for the new year.
Start thinking about Christmas before Halloween
Christmas ads, holiday songs and shopping can absolutely wait until December, but your holiday cards can’t. If you’re going to make an amazing holiday impression, you should start the process in September or October. As many businesses take time off at the end of the year, holiday cards should start arriving the first two weeks in December. If you’re interested in sharing some holiday magic with your colleagues, clients and potential customers, give us a jingle. We’re happy to talk Christmas any time of year.
