Creative Christmas Cards, Colors of the Year and How Atlanta Became Influencer Capital

A Creative Roundup of Christmas Cards From Marketing Agencies

One of the most fun annual brainstorms back in my agency days was to create the card/gifts we would send to clients every holiday season. Last week's Non-Obvious Insights Show featured a fascinating conversation with gifting expert all about how to give better gifts. So this roundup of the best Christmas cards and holiday promotions from marketing agencies was a fun read if you love creativity and the holidays. There were bobble head dolls, crafty toilet paper, gamified email, pets in a lockdown music video and lots more. Yup, I miss those brainstorms.

Atlanta: The New Influencer Capital of America

"Atlanta’s creators are noteworthy for the ways in which they defy prevailing ideas about the influencer economy ... they’re hard working, focused and have a deep understanding of the internet. But they show none of the entitlement or attitude that has come to characterize the better-known TikTok stars of Los Angeles. Another key difference revolves around race. Atlanta’s creators are predominantly Black."

The so-called "Influencer Mansions" filled with TikTok celebrities all trying to outdo one another have become a quintessentially LA thing. Atlanta's expanding influencer scene is taking a different approach. As this NY Times article highlights, new collaborative creator spaces like the Collab Crib and Valid Crib are both building communities of all-Black Gen Z creators who lift one another up instead of constantly competing. While they continue to struggle with problems of attracting enough "woke sponsors" and the lasting challenge of what WIRED called "digital blackface," their emergence is bringing more attention to undervalued black creators, as well as Atlanta itself.

Pantone Chooses Two Colors of the Year to Tell The Dual Story 2021

Ultimate Gray and Illuminating. Those are the two colors Pantone has picked as their official colors for 2021, and it's meant to describe the grayness of our existence during the pandemic as well as the light at the end of the tunnel when we do finally emerge, get the vaccine and go back to seeing one another. This combination of a "dependable gray" with a yellow that feels like "the dawning of hope" is an intentional combination - but has also sparked more than one comparison to Maurizio Cattelan’s viral sculpture of a banana stuck on the wall with duct tape called Comedian. That sculpture was widely considered an "dark joke" that sold for more than $120,000. In many ways, 2020 was itself a dark joke on all of us. We're already living the gray. Hopefully the yellow is coming soon.

Detroit Hotel Imagines a Clever Workaround For Restaurant Ban

When your state issues a ban on indoor dining in the winter, how do you keep serving your customers? For the Detroit Foundation Hotel, this was an opportunity to create a clever workaround where they converted their hotel room suites into private dining rooms for groups of six or fewer people. It's a great and imaginative way to use what you have and still focus on delivering a great and unique experience to your customers in a time when that seems harder than ever.

Generation Z Trends For 2021

"If Gen Z has one discernible characteristic, it's that they genuinely care about what their money goes toward beyond the product itself ... they're really influential because they're willing to make changes, hold brands accountable and require a sense of transparency."

There are lots of interesting insights about the rising Generation Z (a term generally used to describe those born after 1995) in this article - including their demands from brands and how they expect transparency and are constantly willing to make choices about consumption based on the values of the brands they buy.

Another insight from this article contrasted their behavior and beliefs with the Millennials who came before them: "they use social media more as a communication tool, and feel at liberty to act like their true authentic selves online. On the other hand, millennials see social media as an art form where they seek to show the best version of themselves." For more insights like this, the full article and the research behind it is worth a read.