Vicki Scheffel of Ge-Skenk on the mistakes companies make when choosing year-end gifts and why a good idea starts with a good brief.
Branded water bottles may sound like a perfectly reasonable year-end gifting request, but it reveals one of the biggest mistakes companies make when choosing corporate gifts. They have already decided what to give before considering who will receive it or what they want it to achieve.
“‘We need 500 water bottles’ is not really a brief, it’s an order,” says Scheffel. “A good brief tells us who the people are, why they are receiving something, what you want them to feel and what the occasion means. It also opens up possibilities around who makes the gift and where the company’s gifting spend ultimately goes. Then we can really ideate something that is relevant, that is customised and creative.”
Having worked with companies on everything from branded merchandise to unusual creative gifting concepts, Scheffel shares what she wishes businesses understood before choosing their gifts.
- Know the people, not just the numbers
Understanding who will receive a gift is one of the most important parts of any brief, but it’s very often overlooked when conversations start with quantities and budgets.
Are they mostly in offices or on the road? Are they young graduates, long-standing employees, clients you know well, people scattered around the country? What have they received before? What would genuinely delight them, amuse them or be useful to them?
Knowing these details gives the creative team something meaningful to work with, rather than simply choosing from a list of catalogue products.
- Stop confusing useful with safe
Scheffel believes companies sometimes confuse usefulness with playing it safe, especially when choosing those familiar corporate gifting favourites.
“There are only so many generic notebooks, bottles and tech accessories one human being needs. That doesn’t mean those things are bad gifts. They can be brilliant when there is a strong idea behind them, or when the product itself is genuinely beautiful or interesting.”
The problem is choosing something because it feels corporate enough, rather than because somebody would actually want it.
- Would you want it without the logo?
Scheffel has a simple test for deciding when branding adds to a gift and when it starts taking away from the recipient’s experience.
“My test is always, would you still want it if you didn’t work for the company?”
She believes branding can add to a gift when it is clever, subtle or part of the idea.
“But if the logo becomes the loudest thing in the room, it often stops feeling like a gift and starts feeling like marketing collateral. Sometimes the best branding is in the packaging, the story, the message or one beautifully considered detail.”
- Be clear about what the budget covers
A R500 gifting budget can mean very different things depending on what a company expects to be included.
“People often think only about the product price, but the value of a corporate gift also lies in the creative thinking and work that goes into making it happen. The budget needs to account for ideation, sourcing, personalisation, branding, packaging, design, project management, fulfilment, delivery and logistics, especially when gifts are going to individuals rather than one office.”
She says clients should clarify whether their R500 per person means R500 for the gift itself or R500 all in.
“Those are two very different briefs.”
- Give the wild ideas a chance (you may be pleasantly surprised)
Scheffel has often had to talk clients out of ideas that sounded wonderful but would have disappointed in practice.
“It might be too fragile, too difficult to ship, heavily branded, impossible to produce properly within the timeframe or simply something people already own five of.”
Part of her job is being able to say, “I understand why you like that idea, but I don’t think it’s going to land the way you think it will.”
At Ge-Skenk, the creative process also includes what the team calls Wild Cards, unexpected ideas that push the original brief into territory the client may never have considered.
“They are often out of budget and completely wild, but mostly get chosen!”
- Start with how you want people to feel
If Scheffel could change one thing about the way companies approach gifting briefs, it would be to really think about the emotional response they want to create.
“Tell us what you want the person receiving it to feel. That sounds ridiculously simple, but it changes everything.”
She explains that “thank you for an extraordinary year” is a different brief from “we want them to laugh”, “we want people to feel proud to be part of this company” or “we want this to feel unmistakably South African”.
Perhaps the next time a company sits down to discuss its year-end gifts, the first question shouldn’t be what to order, but what they want someone to feel when they open it.
“Even one small piece of human insight can take us somewhere completely different. Once we understand that, the gift becomes an idea rather than an item, and an experience instead of another cupboard filler.”