The Christmas Card Debate

There is a debate raging right now in offices across the country. It's an annual debate and one that started about 15 years ago with the increased use of electronic communications. Should we or shouldn't we send out Christmas cards (the secondary debate is should we or shouldn't we call them Season's Greetings cards).

I am going to start sounding like a broken record but in this case, that's a good thing. I'm being consistent. Whether or not your company sends out Christmas cards in the mail depends on what your brand is all about. When you have a solidly defined brand, a lot of the questions become much easier to answer in areas such as communications, marketing, human resource management and so on.

For example, when I was at St. Boniface Hospital Foundation, we had established that our brand was first and foremost about compassion. Everything the hospital, research and foundation stood for was in support of human compassion for those who were ill or were family or friends of the ill person. So as much as I personally don't like to send or receive Christmas cards, it made a lot of sense that as a Foundation we should send out Christmas cards to our biggest supporters - both donors, volunteers and suppliers.

Back it up a few years to when I was at Agricore United where we had established our brand was integrity. Everything we did was done with integrity - how we interacted with our farmer customers, how we interacted with government, with competitors, with suppliers - had to be done with integrity, adhering to moral and ethical principles. Among those ethical principles was a commitment to controlling costs. There was little advantage for us as a corporation to send out copious amounts of Christmas cards. It was contrary to our brand. However, sending out a handful of personal greetings to key customers and supporters from individual officers of the company did make sense. Did it have to be cards? Not necessarily - many of those greetings were made by phone which is more personal.

The debate on whether to send or not to send Christmas cards is going to carry on for years to come and now there is an added wrinkle in the mix -- the option to send an e-card. I suggest that you think about how you feel when you get an e-card from someone you regularly do business with before deciding if you want to send one out to your regular customers and suppliers. It may be more cost effective, but does it have the personal touch you are intending in the first place when deciding to send out cards?

If, after reading this entire blog, you are still unsure what your company should do I have one final suggestion for your Christmas card dilemma. Calculate the cost of printing and mailing the cards, add in the time required for your staff to sign, address and stamp the cards. Take that entire total and make a donation to a cause that is closely aligned with your organization's mission. Then add a post script line to automatically come up on every email going out from your company throughout the month of December that says something like: "To honour our clients, suppliers and supporters, ABC Company has made a donation to DEF Charity this holiday season. Thank you for your continued support."

Don't forget to put the same message on your website - front and centre - with a small explanation of why you chose to go this route, including some information on the charity and its mandate. You can also provide a comment box so that visitors to your site can let you know what they think of this idea - evaluation is the key to quality future planning.