Most of the holiday cards I get from vendors, colleagues and people in the biz are of the generic "Happy Holidays" genre. Fine with me: I have a long list of people on the card list and not all celebrate Christmas.
When I worked in country music radio back in the early 90's, it was not uncommon to get personalized cards from the artists themselves. Country artists are like that - they are much more accessible than pop and rock artists. Today, we get holiday cards from our music labels and local reps (ie. "Happy Holiday from Atlantic Records.") But this year we got a card that caused quite a stir from the time it entered the building.
I got a call from the mail room saying that I had an envelope with my name and address hand-written - with a return address from the Goo-Goo Dolls. When we opened it, there was a card inside hand signed by the guys. One of the signatures was even slightly smudged - proving that it wasn't photo-shopped in. The mail room was all abuzz and everyone wanted to see it. TALK ABOUT IMPACT!
Once I got the card back to my office, I closed the door and put my cynical investigative skills to work. The Goo's played a show for us here in Radio City back in April and they signed a bunch of stuff for the office. Sure enough - the signatures matched. Robbie's was almost an exact match, while Johnny's was extremely close. They were real.
Again - we have a ton of stuff that they signed for us back in April. But there was something about the human touch that really stood out. We immediately started sharing stories about their visit back in April:
http://podcast.wkti.com/LivefromStudioD/tabid/923/Default.aspx
When I worked in country music radio back in the early 90's, it was not uncommon to get personalized cards from the artists themselves. Country artists are like that - they are much more accessible than pop and rock artists. Today, we get holiday cards from our music labels and local reps (ie. "Happy Holiday from Atlantic Records.") But this year we got a card that caused quite a stir from the time it entered the building.
I got a call from the mail room saying that I had an envelope with my name and address hand-written - with a return address from the Goo-Goo Dolls. When we opened it, there was a card inside hand signed by the guys. One of the signatures was even slightly smudged - proving that it wasn't photo-shopped in. The mail room was all abuzz and everyone wanted to see it. TALK ABOUT IMPACT!
Once I got the card back to my office, I closed the door and put my cynical investigative skills to work. The Goo's played a show for us here in Radio City back in April and they signed a bunch of stuff for the office. Sure enough - the signatures matched. Robbie's was almost an exact match, while Johnny's was extremely close. They were real.
Again - we have a ton of stuff that they signed for us back in April. But there was something about the human touch that really stood out. We immediately started sharing stories about their visit back in April:
http://podcast.wkti.com/LivefromStudioD/tabid/923/Default.aspx
BTW: Notice how they got around the whole "Christmas" versus "Happy Holidays" thing: IT WAS A HAPPY NEW YEAR'S CARD.
As a marketing tact - this really cut through.
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