E-Christmas Cards Suck (for the most part)
Posted by Keelan on December 19th, 2007
For me, nothing says “I refuse to put any effort or expense whatsoever into this” quite like an e-Christmas / e-Holiday card does.
I’ve received quite a few e-cards this year.
Some are well done and you can tell the sender/sending organization actually put a fair amount of time and effort into creating something clever and memorable, like this one from McMillan, an advertising and design agency here in Ottawa – I don’t mind those as much. In fact, I liked McMillan’s so much I forwarded it to a few people.
However, others have (pardon the expression) been STRAIGHT SHITE! And worse, a lot of them have been very similar: a winter scene with the ‘cutting-edge animation’ of falling snow and some generic, unoriginal greeting.
Christmas / Holiday cards is a contact with your customers, partners and suppliers, and like all contact with those parties, its an opportunity to build the relationship, so it should be done right.
Now, I’m in favour of electronic versus paper when in comes to most things, but I’m sure I’m not the only person that likes to put received Christmas cards up on the window sill in my office or on my fireplace mantle at home.
Further, at Thornley Fallis & 76design a lot of what we do is electronic communication, but I still think its important to send our clients, partners, suppliers and other contacts an actual card that they keep longer than the time it takes to open and delete an email.
We usually start work on original concepts in October, we then have them printed, pull together about 1000 addresses/labels, and get them out late November/early December. Over the years, I think we’ve come up with some pretty good cards that reflect the ‘personality’ of our firm. Last year our card included a line of perforated gift labels. With concept development, design, printing, envelope stuffing, labelling, postage, etc. it’s more costly and time consuming than an e-card, but I think it’s worth it.
Of course, not every organization can design a card in house, but firms (like our design studio) are available for hire. If you can’t do it in-house, hire a firm or freelancer to help you do it right. It won’t cost that much and will enhance this contact with your customers, partners and suppliers.
December 19th, 2007 » 3:20 pm
Keelan – couldn’t agree more. I love the fact that we still do proper, custom Christmas cards around here. Like you, I’ve had a bumper crop of e-cards this year and they just about all suck. Instantly forgettable, twee and, at worst, just plain annoying. Further – no less than three of the ones I received were so saturated with active content that they were immediately flagged as “unsafe” and automatically routed to my spam folder. Gotta love that.
December 19th, 2007 » 9:14 pm
I think you’re on to something here … I’ve made your post our “Rant of the Day” on the OttawaStart Blog:
http://ottawastart.blogspot.com/2007/12/rant-of-day-christmas-e-cards.html
December 20th, 2007 » 12:01 pm
hi guys,
sorry you hate the eCards; but done properly, with time, effort and forethought, you can do a lot with an electronic card. at iStudio, we’re really proud of our card (which may or not have gotten stuck in michael OCC’s spam filter) and put a lot of love into it.
however, it’s more of an interactive ecommerce microsite than a card but we like it, and all the people who have slef-selected themselve to send feedback or bid on items (clients, colleagues at Fleishman-Hillard, partners, friends and family) have loved it.
hopefully this will change your mind about ecards…
http://www.istudio.ca/holiday07
Ed
December 20th, 2007 » 12:55 pm
Ed,
I agree that when done properly, like yours which is cool (i just checked it out), they can be good. That’s why I added ‘(for the most part)’ to the title of my post. And check out paragraph 3 where I said they can be good if done properly. I also included a link to one that I liked. But this year I have received way more that are absolute crap, than good ones. Thus the reason for the post. Merry Christmas!
December 20th, 2007 » 1:22 pm
I hate e-cards as well, I got a ton of them from clients .. I don’t get it? We did the same thing Joe, we produced and created our own card. this year’s was the best. We received phone calls and letters praising our cards. We also do corporate gifts at Christmas. It’s important and nice to acknowledge major clients with a small thanks! Nice post. Merry Christmas … (yes, I still say that too!)
December 9th, 2008 » 4:20 pm
[...] year, I did this post about Holiday/Christmas cards after receiving several crappy electronic cards, some of [...]
December 20th, 2008 » 6:17 pm
I’m not so sure about that McMillan e-card. I’ve seen that joke a million times before… gingerbread man gets eaten. It didn’t really even have an original twist on it. This one I received recently I found interesting though. http://www.slorac.com.
C