Categories: Articles

Holiday Greetings

How many cards did you get this year? How many e-cards did you get this year? How many general email wishes did you get?
Here are my thoughts: we’ve become sadly lazy with this whole holiday greeting process and this year, I am just as guilty as the next person. This is that one time in the year where we are supposed to reach out to family, friends and business colleagues to let them know that we appreciate them and that our lives are better because they are a part of it.
Holiday greetings are also an amazing time to let your personal brand shine. A card that is not handwritten with the recipients name on it and a personalized message (even a short one-liner) is a failure. A mass text email that is not personalized and reads like a signature file is not acceptable. An e-card that follows the same path as that mass text email but has some random animated cartoon is just as bad.
I’m not writing this to point fingers. The finger is squarely pointed back at me this year. I’m also not trying to be a Scrooge. This is just a thought because out of all the many cards, gifts, emails and e-cards I got this year, there are only two that stood out: they were both handwritten to me with a personalized message.
Isn’t it amazing what a handwritten note or a five minute phone call can do to heighten a personal brand at this time of year?

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.