An Overlooked Economic Indicator
I’ve worked for the same company for five years, and this will be my sixth year of tracking the gifts sent to our company during the holiday season. (Okay, the Christmas season. I’m a Christian, and I celebrate Christmas. But my bosses are Jewish; they celebrate Hanukkah. Makes life interesting.)
Anyway, for six years, I’ve kept a log of the gifts sent to any of my three bosses, and to the company in general, so that my bosses can send the appropriate thanks after the New Year. And, from my observations from December 2004 to today, I think the economic analysts may be missing a really big economic indicator.
I can hear them say, “But we look at holiday expenditures!” And yes, they do. At the overall population’s spending. And maybe they break it into demographics. But, honestly, for most people, they are going to give something to the people they care about. They will spend something at the holidays. Why not look at a sector that doesn’t have to give — a sector in which giving serves more than one purpose? For most people, gifts acknowledge and honour a relationship. I give to you because I care about you as my relative, friend, co-worker, or whatever, and I want you to know that I value that relationship.
But corporate gifts are different. While they do serve to express thanks for an ongoing relationship, they are also a form of advertising. (Don’t forget to use ABC Widget in the coming year! Here’s a calendar/note pad/pen/coffee mug with our name on it to help you remember us!) Corporate gifts, when in the form of donations in honour of another, can also be a way of showcasing the company’s commitment to the community. And corporate gifts, unlike gifts to your mom or your kids, can be completely dispensed with when the budget gets tight enough.
I knew there were problems in the economy in 2007. And the holiday season that year confirmed it. You see, from 2004 through 2006, our smallish company received more than 100 cards every year, and more than half were “donation cards” — cards bought from a charity to help support that charity. In 2007, the number of cards received dropped below 100, and it has dropped steadily every since.
And then there were the actual gifts received. In those early years, there were some amazing things. Bottle and gift sets and more bottles of liquor and wine. Huge gift baskets. Flash drives. Cross pens. Enormous boxes of chocolates. Enormous slabs of chocolate with company logos sculpted into them, and with fancy little hammer and chisel sets for breaking them up. $100 gift cards to various restaurants and stores.
And the sheer volume of gifts was astounding. One year, one of my bosses had to write three dozen thank-you notes after the holidays. There were so many gifts that a holiday tradition was born. The execs would look over their haul and decide what things they wanted to keep. Anything they didn’t want was given to our Office Manager, who stored the non-perishables in her office until the day of the employee holiday potluck. (Perishables were set in the break-room for everyone to share.) At the potluck, everyone drew a ticket from a pot. The other half of each ticket was taped to one of the gift items, and you simply matched your ticket number to the number on the gift. There was always enough for everyone in our office of about 40 people to get something.
But in 2007, that changed. Suddenly, the gifts were much smaller, and far fewer of them came in. Gift certificates were $50 or $25. Candy boxes went from 5 pounds to 1 pound. The enormous slabs of chocolate disappeared completely. Gift baskets were smaller, and there were fewer of them. We began getting a lot more calendars and donation cards, and a lot less wine and liquor. (And a lot more things were hand-delivered rather than being posted or FedExed.)
I imagine 2010 is going to be another tough year. Why? Because thus far into Holiday Season 2009, we have received only 23 holiday cards, only 8 of which are “donation cards.” And each of my bosses has gotten a bottle of wine and a bucket of candy — hand-delivered.
Now, admittedly, there are still two full work-weeks until Christmas. And I, myself, haven’t sent our company’s gifts and holiday cards yet. (And yes, we are cutting back sharply.) So there’s still time for things to pick up. But when you receive a card that says “With so many non-profit groups experiencing a reduction in charitable giving over the past year … we have decided to forego our usual holiday gifts and instead will make an additional donation to these two important charities,” well, it doesn’t tend to make one optimistic.
Except maybe about the wisdom of local CEOs in evaluating their expenditures and choosing to benefit charity rather than impress other CEOs with fancy gifts. That does make me optimistic.