With only a few days to go until the Festive Friday (1 December), address books are being dusted off, ink pens are being filled, fingers flexed and seasonal cheer being topped up in readiness for the official kick start to Christmas card sending.
The GCA-instigated initiative, which falls on the coming Friday this year, will see hoards of people down work tools to write their first batch of Christmas cards that will be posted to arrive in very early December.
“The support for Festive Friday, now in its 5th year, continues to grow as more publishers, retailers, consumer groups and charities get involved, many coming together to write their Christmas cards,” said Sharon Little, ceo of the GCA. “It is great how so many different businesses, groups and individuals have downloaded elements of our free toolkit to create their own activity around Final countdown to the industry’s Christmas card sending kickstart ,” Sharon added, making reference to the free downloadable graphical toolkit of elements (kindly created by The Art File) that are hosted on the GCA website.
Publisher Blue Eyed Sun got into the Festive Friday spirit even earlier than the designated day, with a ‘Christmas card writing hour’ for its team to write and send cards as part of its support for the 2017 campaign. Blue Eyed Sun provided the cards and paid for the postage while the team got into the Christmas spirit – even the office dog Bert donned some festive garb! “Our team wrote as many cards as they wanted to in the hour. We managed over 203 Christmas cards between us,” said Jeremy Corner, md of Blue Eyed Sun.
“It’s a wonderful feeling when we think about all of the love going out into the world from this short amount of time dedicated to card sending and we recommend it to anyone involved in the card industry.”
This year, Royal Mail has tapped into Festive Friday making it a focus of a social media campaign, while news of Festive Friday has really snowballed in the crafting community.
Leading craft magazine, PaperCrafter is not only promoting Festive Friday in its magazine, but also created a specific blog post inspiring its many fans with seven different ideas of Christmas cards they could make and send to coincide with Festive Friday.
“The idea of Festive Friday is to create a great sparky first wave of beautiful cards arriving in the first week of December to get everyone in the Christmas card-sending mood!
Do let us know what you get up to, using #FestiveFriday and sending in your photos and stories!” implores Sharon.
