Hosted Environments and Gifting
Most corporate gifts
are sent to a list.
We are asked for a gift. We are actually being asked to make someone feel considered, which is a different brief and a harder one.
What usually goes wrong
The budget is rarely
the problem.
Most corporate gifting arrives in the same fortnight as everyone else's, with a printed card, no name on it and no reason given, and it is in the office kitchen by lunchtime. That is not a spending problem. Plenty of money went into it.
The ones people keep arrive because something actually happened — a settlement, a result, a long matter finally closed — and they look like a person chose them rather than a category. That decision is made weeks before anything is ordered, which is usually why it does not get made at all.
We have written about this at more length in the journal.
December
Everyone sends something in December. Very little of it is remembered by February.
What we do
One piece,
or several hundred.
Seasonal campaigns
Christmas and end-of-year gifting across a client list, held as one campaign rather than a scramble in the last fortnight. Delivered nationally and internationally.
Settlement and milestone gifting
Settlements, launches, anniversaries and appointments. These are the ones clients remember, largely because almost nobody marks them.
Grazing and hosted hospitality
Grazing platters, boxes and stations, and hospitality from breakfast service through to sit-down and plated meals.
Bespoke individual pieces
One gift, for one person, where the relationship warrants it — including candles made under our own hand.
What we will say first
Before you spend
anything at all.
If the list is too long for the budget to mean anything on it, we will tell you at the start, and we would far rather explain that then than have you notice it in January. Sometimes the right answer is fifteen considered gifts rather than two hundred forgettable ones. Occasionally it is a letter and no gift at all.
Where gifting sits inside a wider calendar of client events and seasonal moments, it is usually better held as one engagement across the year. That is described on The Year.
Who this suits
Organisations sending
to the same people again.
Law and accounting firms where the referral list is the business. Property practices with a settlement every few weeks and nobody internally owning what gets sent. Firms sending at volume who would rather it did not feel like volume.
In every case the list next year is largely the list this year, and that is what makes it worth getting right.
Begin a conversation
Every engagement
starts with a conversation.
Tell us what the occasion is for, who will be there and what has to be true by the end of it. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right practice for it.
Request an introduction