What Makes Corporate Gifts Special

I’m not sure if it’s a good thing. Corporate gift-giving has become so commonplace, so ordinary it has had two results. One, it has degraded the ‘specialness’ of both the act and the gift itself. Second, it has reduced gift-giving to a routine, a corporate ritual, a force of habit even. There was a time I remember when receiving gifts from the boss or the company was truly a unique experience. Whether it was a very personal day, like a birthday, or a special recognition for an accomplishments, receiving gifts often meant that the company appreciated me both as a an employee and as a person.

Today it has become so routine. I don’t with a lot of employees today but for many of my own office mates, receiving corporate gifts has become ordinary regardless of the gift. Or is it precisely because of that?

Ordinary Gifts Make for Ordinary Emotions

Perhaps gift-giving is still special and what makes it less so is the kind of gift that comes with it. Simply put, corporate gifts are usually cut-and-dried items: note pads, paperweight, planners, t-shirts, jackets, caps, mugs, and umbrella. Today they are USBs, earphones, power banks, charging cable. There is no denying that they are functional which is the principal feature of any corporate gift. They must be routinely useful such that the product brand or company name becomes associated with lifestyle. Corporate gifts after all also serve branding and name-recall purposes.

But no matter how expensive a premium corporate gift may be, when you receive the same items year in and year out, they become ordinary. Special gifts are special because they are rare. And corporate gifts are often too ordinary to be rare or special. And while it is still a gesture and gift that is worth appreciating, there is little fun fare and excitement.

It is perhaps for this reason that many Singapore companies nowadays exert significant efforts to provide employees, clients, suppliers, individual consumers and other business partners with unique corporate gifts and other giveaways. And make no mistake about it, finding the best kind of gift has become a bigger challenge than it was a few years ago.

Not-So-Special Choice that Create Special Impact

In terms of selecting, there is first the price to consider. A few years back I remember a dilemma. We had a fixed budget for gifts so the question then was should the company buy the more expensive gifts which meant they are quality gifts but we could only afford a few and therefore only a few would be given. Or do we settle with the cheaper ones which meant they are less durable but we could give them twice as many employees. In a way, it was a quality and quantity matter.

The answer of course as we found, is not as a simple as cost-benefit equation because we had to factor in employee satisfaction and well-being. In other words, we settled with the formula that would allow us to give to the most number of employees. Better more happy employees that a few pampered, privileged ones.

What we did instead is simply make the gifts more meaningful: to go for personalized corporate gifts. We customized our shirts to include not only our brand but the names of our employees. We also made coffee mugs with their photos digitally printed on them. Instead of regular office shirts, we bought dri-fit shirts that was useful not only on casual days but in fun runs and other office sports events. I guess in the end it was good. The special effort that we exerted was also appreciated by our office mates and made our company gifts achieve what it was supposed to: a feeling of being special.