Suppliers: here’s how to slash your Q4 marketing budget

Shimano Europe got the right idea in 2000. The company is donating their £9k Chrimbo card budget to a cycle promotion project instead.

Most other suppliers persevere with an impersonal mail-out of corporatised Christmas cards that fools nobody.

Don’t you just hate getting Christmas cards signed by a load of bods you’ve probably never ever met or talked to, and mailed out from a marketing database with not a smidgen of personalisation?

82 percent of you certainly seem to feel that way. Our Xmas online poll received 74 votes and most people gave a thumbs down to corporate Christmas cards.

A few companies go to the time and trouble to have Christmas cards designed with cycling Santas or bike trade reindeers. Some bike trade companies have their cards pre-printed with signatures, or use rubber stamps! Most don’t sign the recipients name in the card itself. What’s the point of all this? Shouldn’t the cash be better spent?

Getting into the spirit of Christmas is great, but impersonalised cards are real turkeys. Have certain companies not stopped to think what kind of cold, impersonal marketing message they are sending out?

Next year, a load of cash could be saved if the sending of thoughtless databased Xmas cards was binned and instead bike trade execs hand-picked a load of their best customers, favourite fellow execs and wrote them personalised Christmas cards.

Bah, humbug?