Last year, I did this post about Holiday/Christmas cards after receiving several crappy electronic cards, some of which were simply sad looking emails with “Holiday/Christmas” clip art in them.

As I said in my post last year, a Holiday card is an opportunity for contact with your network of customers, partners and suppliers, and like all such contacts with those parties, it is an opportunity to build the relationship, so it should be done right. 

When you meet a client for breakfast, lunch or dinner, you don’t go to McDonalds.  When take a client to a hockey game, you don’t buy seats at the top of the upper level.  And when you take client golfing, you don’t go to the $14 green fee municipal course.  So why then do some senior corporate executives think that it is acceptable to send out a Holiday email that clearly took no more than 5 minutes for their assistant with zero graphic design skills to prepare?

Anyone that has ever been in my office can attest to the fact that when comes to paper, I don’t want it around.  But I’m sure I’m not the only person that likes to put received Holiday cards up on the window sill.  Now I’m not saying e-cards can’t be well done.  I have seen several clever ones and even forwarded a couple to friends and colleagues.

At Thornley Fallis & 76design a lot of what we do is electronic communication (websites, multimedia, online communities, blogs, etc), but I still think its important for our staff to send their network of contacts a physical Holiday card that will stay around their office longer than the time it takes to open, maybe read, and delete an email message.

We usually start work on original concepts in October, we then have them printed, pull together about 1000 addresses/labels, and get them in the mail first week of December.  Over the years, I think we’ve come up with some pretty good cards that reflect the ‘personality’ of our firm and the people that work here. 

This year, our Creative Director Dom Coballe and Designers Shawn McCann, Jeff Young, Ben Watts and Meghan Gough took things to another level.  We asked staff to bring in personal Christmas/Holiday photos on themselves from when they were young.  We then designed a series of four retro-looking cards (shown below) that the photos were incorporated into.  We identified the staff members in the photos by name, current title at the firm and age at the time the photo was taken (e.g. Keelan Green, Vice-President & General Manager, Age 4).

We also produced a website so card recipients could view the other three cards in the series and we added in an interactive photo album so we could include more of the staff photos we collected.  The website address (www.onepiecesnowsuit.ca) is on the back of each card.

Now, of course, not every organization can design a card in-house like we can, but firms like 76design are available for hire. If you can’t do it in-house, hire a design agency or freelancer to help you do it right.  It won’t cost that much and it will enhance this contact with your customers, partners and suppliers.

I just received my welcome package to Fairmont President’s Club Premier.

I don’t normally get excited about stuff like this, but this was a very impressive, first rate effort by Fairmont.

Included in my package (shown spread out on my desk in the photo above) was:

• My 2008 Membership Card,
• Three room upgrade certificates,
• Two certificates for $25 off lunch or dinner, and
• Three luggage tags with my name on them and a Fairmont phone number and email address. If someone finds my bag(s), they (presumably after removing any valuables ) can contact Fairmont who will contact me to arrange for my luggage to be returned.

This is the type of customer service/relations that guarantees I will always look to stay at a Fairmont Hotel when travelling.

More knowledge from the recent Social Media for Government conference that took place in Ottawa this week.

Following demographic developments is a fascinating study. Society is changing as new technological advances change the face of one generation and redefine how that group interacts, understands, consumes and advances their culture.

From a presentation from some thinkers at the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum I learned about Millennials (for more on the ROM surf this). Intrigued by this demographic, I did some research.

Millennials are broadly described as being born post 1980 (say, between 1982 and 1994) and only know a world with digital technology. They signal the largest shift in media and behaviour since the dawn of television, which separates them in numerous ways from an older generation of media consumers.

Millennials have some interesting characteristics that further define them as a demographic group.

Socially expressive and inquisitive individuals, Millennials are the product of a society that included high rates of divorce and two-income families. Some theorists believe this translates into Millennials lacking an automatic deferral to authority and a new take on romantic and personal expression.

The ability to recreate, remix, retrieve and reconfigure the past (through technology) is expected. Millennials are resourceful and collaborative and have proven to be innovative thinkers.

Highly social and interconnected, Millennials work well in teams but are not considered highly loyal to employers, work places, or even–it is believed–romantic partners. There is no broad consensus if this “lack of loyalty” stems from social conditions (for example, divorce rates) or from some other factor. Millennials expect–and subsequently create–challenging and stimulating work experiences and places with a strong focus on the “team” and social life. (That is, they work and play together.)

This is an interesting demographic now assuming positions in the workforce and in the broader community of consumers. It will be interesting to watch them and their impact on society, consumer culture, communications and social media development.

Yesterday I substituted for Joe Thornley and chaired a conference in Ottawa about Social Media for Government. The conference was hosted by the Advanced Learning Institute under the direction of Kelly Flynn, who put together a one-of-a-kind event.

The attendees were engaged, interested (and interesting) and all were either operating with social media tools now or preparing to launch them in the near future. It was a high-energy day with ideas, innovation, thought-leaders and learners collaborating together in sessions, presentations and meals. (Kudos to ALI for creating dynamic lunch and supper sessions that offered both choice and networking.)

Joe has a following among innovators who are active with social media tools and there were a number of people who already interact and communicate with him now plus a new cadre of people who joined social media sites–for the first time–yesterday and learned directly from Joe how to make these cutting-edge tools a part of their work lives.

This was a connected day. I was learning myself while chairing the day and I made some great contacts among the crowd.

Today (Weds) Thornley Fallis was again present; Joe is back to chair and lead the day while John Sobol and Nick Rusczkowski (my colleagues) presented at the morning session.

I will be adding more information about individual sessions as soon as I touch base with the presenters. As a teaser, however, I can announce that there are a number of federal government entities who are planning to launch social media tools in the near future. What I would like to do is post some Q&A sessions on CapitalPR with these innovators and share their message and knowledge with  an even broader base.

I thought this was a pretty good CSR / marketing initiative by Banana Republic.  Bring in a gently used sweater that they will donate to Goodwill and receive 30% off a new one. I brought in a sweater that I hadn’t worn for a while last week and picked up a new one.

Who hasn’t had to send a file yesterday that was too large for email?

Next time you find yourself in this situation, try YouSendIt.com.

I’ve used it a few times.

Not only can you get it there in a few minutes, eliminate the hassle of over-sized email attachments and avoid clogged inboxes, but you save the overnight courier cost of sending a CD/DVD.  Plus its really easy to use.

A well timed knock on my front door gave me a polite and truthful reason to say goodbye to the telemarketer who was interrupting my enjoyment of a Senators playoff game. But I hesitated. What if that knock was someone was trying to sell me yet something else? Perhaps I should have turned off the lights to give the illusion I wasn’t at home. Or run the shower, and wash my suspicions away. 

My hunches were right. It was someone peddling something else. I felt it my civic duty to answer the door though. But the id bearing university student wasn’t actually selling anything, except ideas. His first bright one- handing over a few free compact fluorescent bulbs (CFBs) from Project Porchlight.  By changing one regular light bulb per household for a compact fluorescent one, the average Ottawa resident will save $50 in energy costs on their hydro bill over the lifetime of the bulb. 200,000 bulbs replaced citywide will result in 100,000 fewer tonnes of greenhouse gases emitted. And replacing just one old fashioned lightbulb with one new cfb in every household across Canada is the equivalent of taking 66,000 cars of the road. Now, that’s change within reach!  And just like Saint Nick pulling presents from his sack, this canvasser surrendered even more goodies from his EnviroCentre backpack. It’s an effort to help citizens use less energy and decrease their water usage. In other words, reduce our carbon footprints. Even Queen Betty’s getting involved. 

The EnviroCentre off loaded two 2 low flow showers heads, a kitchen faucet aerator, two bathroom faucet  aerators and foam tubing for my hot water pipes. By lessening the load in his backpack, he helped me lessen my carbon emissions.   

Ottawa-based Novel Solutions, maker of handy devices such as the Bookhug book holder and the Handyfold paper/letter folder, now brings us the Rimroller.

Paul Kind’s “labour-saving device” made it onto the front page (above the fold) of today’s Ottawa Citizen.

The device is aimed at assisting Tim Hortons coffee drinkers see if they won a prize during the company’s annual Roll Up the Rim To Win promotion, which started a couple of weeks ago on February 26, 2007.

So the release of the Rimroller is a little late and it is not yet available for purchase, although it will be soon through Lee Valley Tools.

In the Citizen article, they asked a few people what they thought about the Rimroller.  I think this comment from one person sums it up best:

“I won’t be buying one.  Nails and teeth work just as well.  But I didn’t think people would ever buy the pet rock either.”

With Tim Hortons selling 300 million cups of coffee per year, if only a small portion of those customers buy a Rimroller…

The other side of it is, given the popularity of Tim Hortons Roll Up the Rim To Win promotion across Canada, linking the Rimroller to it may be a good way for Novel Solutions to raise awareness of its other products amongst its target market (people that buy handy little time-saving devices) and drive sales of them.

Here’s an example of an excellent viral marketing / social media campaign.

More than 25 million people have watched Utah-based Blendtec’s series of ‘Will It Blend?’ videos on YouTube.

To see all the videos, check them out here on YouTube or on the company’s Will it Blend? site.

There’s also the Will It Blend? Blog.

Since debuting in November, the videos have regularly been among the most popular on YouTube, and Blendtec’s sales have quadrupled.

Blendtec’s Total Blender, the one used in the videos, sells for US$400 and the Connoisseur model sells for US$825.

You’d have to do a lot of blending (basically every meal or at least daily) to pay that much for a blender, but the low-cost campaign is definitely very cool and very creative.  No doubt, there are many people out there that will buy the blender just because of the videos.