image Thomas Leuthard https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ cropped from original

Feeling Good About Ourselves

When was the last time that you received a hand-written note or card, where the sentiment was crafted by someone other than Hallmark? When was the last time that someone stopped to offer genuine thanks for something you did?

We often don’t remember the power of taking a few minutes of time to reach out to someone to thank them, compliment them, or otherwise add value to their lives.

When we take the time to reach out, we have the opportunity to reinforce the good that we see. When you are thanked for something you’ve done, you are more likely to do it again.

Building Your Brand

You want to be the person who is known as thoughtful. Your company/department should be remembered as having thoughtful staff. Instituting a ‘culture of thanks’ takes a little effort and support. By doing this, you reinforce your brand and create a positive atmosphere surrounding how people perceive you.

Case Study

We decided that we wanted to celebrate thanking people, make it was easy as we could, and to integrate it closely into our brand.

• Step 1: What form would it take?
  • We like getting thank you cards, so we decided that having thank you cards on hand would be great.
• Step 2: How does it reinforce our brand?
  • We are designers, so we wanted our card to emphasize our personality and ability:
    • Brand: With a raven as our logo, we already had a strong visual identity that we could draw upon.
    • Story: One of the reasons we chose our logo was that many cultures have stories revolving around Raven.
    • Approach: We wanted the card to be interactive so that not only would they get a thank you, they would spend a little time experiencing our card.
• Step 3: A card.
  • Our card comes to you in a square envelope (with lots of stamps… more on that later).
  • You open it, and there is a round card  with a grommet in the center. It spins!
  • You notice that when you spin it, it shows you a word in a language that isn’t English and tells you what the language is.
  • You spin it some more, and you see that they’re mostly Native Alaskan languages, with some other languages commonly spoken in Alaska as well.
  • When you get to ‘English’, you see that the word is ‘Raven’
  • When you turn the card over, there’s a message from one of us to you.
• Step 4: The psychology.
  • We hope that you are happy we’ve reached out to you to say something.
    • We’re trying to build and reinforce a relationship with you. We value you.
  • We hope that you see the card as something cool, and because it has a purpose/value, something you might keep.
    • You may show it to others, and expose them to our brand.
• Step 5: Implementation
  • We have cards, envelopes and postage handy at all times.
  • We encourage staff to send these cards whenever they have an interaction that would benefit from a thank you.
  • We remind people that this includes all people, from the CAD tech who sent us a file to the Principal we had lunch with.
  • We keep a record of to whom they’ve been sent.
  • We also have Corvus Design Stickers, so we usually put one in the envelope. Everyone likes stickers, or knows someone young who does.
• Step 6: Lessons Learned
  • We’re super excited when we go into an office and see our card on a cubicle wall. Success!
  • There are people we’d like to thank more than once, and this card would have minimal impact a second time. So, worked with a photographer to do a set of cards with winter, spring, summer and fall photos of ravens. Now we have the option of five fresh cards to send to any given person.
  • As an interesting “unintentional consequence”, we chose square envelopes because they are cool, and are perfect for a round card. Little did we know that the postal service charges $0.21 extra for square envelopes for special handling.
  • There are so many good times to earnestly thank someone. It’s a meaningful exercise for us to stop, and think about who we’d like to thank.

The Card

It’s hard to convey the card in a photo since it’s interactive, but here it is along with the sticker we include, and our branded USB drive. The USB drive is also a bottle opener, which aligns with our desire that people interact with our freebies. It’s also fun to hand to someone and say, “It holds memory… but helps you forget.”

Corvus Design Circular Raven Card, Bottle Opener USB Drive, and Logo Sticker