Gifts-and-Souvenirs' Mindset

It is all about your mindset. How would you react when I say to you that a gift to your boss could get you promoted to a higher ranking officer in you office? How would you react if someone would remember your name by giving him or her small-and-simple gift card? For you who are going to get married, how would you react if I say that people would remember you wedding party forever until they got Alzheimer, a bad joke actually, by giving them the right souvenir? How would you react? I respect you opinion, but all I want to say is that there are no impossible things to be done if you know how to make it done…

A perfect gift may not be excellent. I dare to say so because there are several things that often missed in our consideration when we prepare gifts, gift card, or souvenirs to someone. I point out 3 considerations to prepare excellent gifts, gift card, or souvenirs, which are: Beauty; Function; and Meaning.

What is the essence of giving gifts to other people? Quoting for John Naisbitt's latest book, Mind Set! "Even though most things are changing, most things remain constant", I would like to say that even though the way we treat our fellows, guests, partners in the old times are different with the way in the present, the essence of treating them actually stays the same. The essence is to give them our affective expressions and expect the other way around, in return. In order to deliver our affective expression in a right way, every gift and souvenir must have 3 considerations mentioned above. Let us discuss them one by one.

Beauty is the first consideration with one single purpose which is to impress the receiver of the gifts on his or her first sight. We know exactly that the meaning of "Judging a book by its cover" is what happens in our society, and based on that fact we should realize that the only chance we had to grab the attention of our gifts' receivers is on their first-glance momentum. The beauty of your gifts can be reflected from its packaging, its size, its color theme, its shape, and other exposures that can be resulted from your gifts or souvenir. As an extreme illustration for you:
"Novel by J.K. Rowling OR J.K. Joking"
"Marketing Seminar by Philip Kotler OR Philip Toddler"
"A wedding gift as Kamasutra for Lovers OR Make Love for Idiots"
The thing which should be highlighted from the above illustration is the ability of the object to attract the receiver's attention as quick as it could. That is how beauty works for you.

Function as the second thing to be considered should be placed with respect. Why is it always about us? Somehow it went through my mind like this, "Why is it must be your friends, guests, partners who must understand your mind? Why is it must they who understand your stories? Why is it must they who must aware with our experience?" As simple as that, I tell you. If we try to make them appreciate our interest, the question that is needed to be asked is "Do they care about it?" If we try to think in reverse, where we put them upfront, they would gladly consider us as an attentive person toward their interest. And that would make them remember us as such person. Start to do our way with your audiences' perspective.

The third thing is the thing that would completely make your gifts or souvenirs become excellent. Meaning is what it called as. Marc Gobé in his book entitled Emotional Branding persistently encourages us to understand the background of our audiences and then put meanings to manipulate their built perspectives. Using this understanding, I try to implement it in the context of gifts and souvenirs; we should have a developing way of thinking in order to deliver our gifts in a more elegant way. By adding certain meaning toward our gifts it would not only stimulate a new point of view for the audience's, but it would also 'tickles' the emotional part of your audience. This kind of sensation toward their rational and emotional part would bring them into an experiential level of involvement.

So, now… How would you like to deliver your gifts? In a common way, or with an elegant approach toward your audiences' rational and emotional sides?

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