Sending a holiday gift to clients always seemed like a nice idea to the owner of Patti Blair Court Reporters, a legal stenography firm in the Loop.
Some years, it was an address book or a pen. Last year, in a creative mood, the firm sent hair dryers. “Some of our balding gentlemen called and said, `Thanks, but I don’t really need it.’ Most didn’t acknowledge it at all,” laments Melanie Spitz, office manager.
This year, Patti Blair Court Reporters chucked the gifts, deciding instead to make contributions to three charities, including a shelter for abused women. “We could have a much bigger impact this way,” said Spitz.
Lots of companies, big and small, have stopped sending holiday gifts. And while some purveyors of expensive scotches and Cuban cigars may miss the good old days, the change in corporate gift-giving practices is proving a boon to charities, many of which are receiving corporate contributions that previously would have gone to client gifts.
“Gift giving has gone the way of the three-martini lunch. Times have changed,” said Tom Kelly, spokesman for First Chicago NBD Corp.
The bank has dumped most gifts in favor of sending 50,000 holiday cards from Children’s Memorial Medical Center to customers. Private banking clients, individuals with $1 million or more in investable assets, still receive a token gift–a compact disc of classical music.
At some firms, belt-tightening has spurred the gift cutback. But mostly, the trend is being driven by the growing prevalence of corporate ethics policies that lay down the law about what types of gifts are acceptable–or that ban them altogether.
Gift giving “creates more problems for firms than it provides solutions to,” said David Messick, professor of business ethics at Northwestern University’s J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management. “Firms understand these things influence people’s judgment.”
And it’s Fortune 500 companies, such as General Motors, that are in the vanguard of redefining what’s proper in the way of gift giving, Messick said.
Gone are the days when buyers for Sears, Roebuck and Co. were besieged with presents from thousands of suppliers eager to do business with the Hoffman Estates-based retail giant. In 1993, Sears rewrote its code of business conduct, prohibiting employees from accepting gifts exceeding $25 in value. Such gifts are returned to sender with a note explaining the policy, said spokeswoman Paula Davis.
Sears also decided to stop sending gifts itself, in order to avoid violating another company’s ethics codes, Davis said.
Leo Burnett, Chicago’s largest advertising agency, also has reined in its holiday largess. Clients once received a dozen Red Delicious apples–Burnett’s corporate symbol–along with a wrought-iron French market basket, or a signed and numbered ceramic vase to display them in. Now they get apples in a corrugated cardboard box with a few chocolates.
With some of the savings, the agency is making a contribution to Chicago’s Off-the-Street Club, a non-profit group that provides an after-school haven for West Side children, said spokesman Wally Petersen.
Many law firms around the country have decided to go with charitable contributions in lieu of gifts, said Larry Bodine, director of communications for Sidley & Austin in Chicago.
Bodine belongs to an Internet discussion group of about 300 people who have similar jobs in law firm marketing. The holiday gift question usually crops up in October with someone asking, “What’s the right thing to do?” said Bodine, one of the group’s administrators. No question, he says, there’s a growing consensus that giving money to charity is the safest way to go.
That’s good news for the Chicago Abused Women Coalition, which is receiving contributions from Patti Blair Court Reporting as well as the owner of two local Body Shop franchises.
Now, Keith Bringe, the shelter’s development director, is trying to negotiate similar arrangements with two law firms and a real estate office. “I think it’s brilliant from a marketing standpoint,” said Bringe. “It shows a depth of interest in the community and a set of values.”
To be sure, traditional gift giving hasn’t disappeared, especially at companies that are privately held. At Sidley & Austin, for example, individual attorneys are permitted to send gifts to clients and receive partial compensation for them as “client development” expenses.
This year, partner Jim Stinson decided to send chocolates from the Long Grove Confectionery embossed with the firm name to 50 of his best clients. “I think it’s a neat thing to do and, it’s not terribly expensive,” said Stinson, who is paying for the gifts with his own money.
That’s important because Stinson, who specializes in insurance litigation, is sending some of the chocolates to state insurance regulators, who are governed by strict codes of conduct. Stinson believes his $15 box of chocolates is too small to create a problem.
Companies such as Lands’ End and Tiffany & Co. that have separate business-to-business gift divisions say that if companies are giving less, they aren’t seeing it.
“Our corporate business will be double this year, and that’s over an increase last year,” said Michael Christ, Tiffany’s vice president, central region. This year the hot gifts are practical ones, such as bookmarks, paperweights and pens.
However, champagne flutes have proven popular, too. In fact, one Chicago law firm has ordered 100 pairs of champagne glasses wrapped in Tiffany’s trademark blue box for clients. Many Tiffany gifts, including the pair of flutes, fall under $50. “It’s a memento or a gesture, not an ethics question,” said Christ.
Lands’ End, the Dodgeville, Wis.-based catalog company, also has seen substantial gains in its holiday corporate business, said Rich Harney, marketing manager for corporate sales.
And more companies are getting creative with what they send. A travel agent in Urbana, Ohio, gave cruise clients a Lands’ End tote bag filled with a beach towel and suntan lotion. The advertising sales people at the Los Angeles Times are giving clients a picnic basket filled with food and a Lands’ End throw.
Still, Lands’ End doesn’t allow its own employees to accept gifts of more than nominal value. So Harney offers this advice: If you’re thinking about sending business gifts, check with recipients beforehand to see if they are allowed to accept them.
