What’s the Future Of Corporate Gifting?

Are you in charge of gifting for your business or in your office? Do you want to make a big impact with your company’s holiday or end of the year corporate gifts this year? Or maybe you want to find a unique way to convey your brand values to employees, clients or referrals? There are many reasons why businesses send gifts and invest in branded gift design from appreciation to corporate retreats, meetings, conferences and much more.

As you and your team members are starting to plan for holiday gifts and do your research on just the right way to make sure your clients and employees feel seen and valued, we wanted to share our thoughts on the future of corporate gifting. 

We’re talking not only about what we see as trending with corporate gifts, but also what’s in and what’s out for companies. Through custom curated gifts, companies are hoping to communicate brand values and at the same time appreciate and acknowledge employees, clients, referrals and guests. It’s a lot packed into one gift design, but it’s achievable!

Gifts that do it all are making the biggest impact for you and your business when it comes to sending the right gift at the right time to convey just the right message that you want. 

Here is our take on the future of corporate gifting and how to achieve your company's goals through curated gift design.

Gifts Sent to Home Over the Office

With workforces being remote and hybrid, gone are the days where corporate gift boxes are automatically sent to recipients’ offices by default. Today, gifts are more commonly sent to home addresses.

Sending corporate gifts to a recipient's home is a chance to create a more personal experience and create a deeper connection with your gift recipients as your business is essentially being invited into their home. You can send a personalized gift design that is more unique or more thoughtful - a gift design that maybe you wouldn’t otherwise send if you were sending to their place of business. 

For personalized gift ideas, you’ll find inspiration in this Rest & Recharge Themed Custom Gifts for Google or the Northern California inspired gifts for Mira Contract featured in our Top Corporate Gift Designs of The Year.

Gifts Sent Pre and Post Corporate Event

Rather than presenting corporate event attendees with a welcome gift upon arrival or hotel check-in, some corporations are leaning towards sending a custom corporate gift box as an invitation to the event. This is a clever way to get attendees excited about RSVPing ‘yes’ to your event!

A carefully curated gift design sent before an event starts can serve a functional role of providing travel information, attire details or an event itinerary, and it can also help to set the tone of your event and get them excited, so they know what to expect.

Equally as often, businesses are sending post-event gifts as a ‘thank you for attending’ gesture. Sending a gift after an event, such as a meeting or a conference, is a memorable way to extend your business as being top-of-mind long after the event has ended and attendees have returned to their day-to-day lives.

For more pre-event and post-event gifting ideas, be inspired by our Top Custom Corporate Event Gift Designs of The Year.

Quality Over Quantity of Branded Items in Gifts

We are seeing less and less clients demand that every single item in a client gift box be branded with their business logo. Instead, they are opting for a quality over quantity on branding gift items and focusing only on the items that will have the biggest impact or make the most sense. We’re using our best creative judgment on which items lend themselves best to having branding and which items are best left logo-less.

Carefully selecting which items receive branding within a gift design helps your brand stand out and is a cost-effective approach to giving versus just branding every item for the sake of branding it. It also gives the gift curations a personal, yet polished, feel which is what we strive for with each and every curated gift box we design.

For more on quality branded gift designs, you might like these California Inspired Custom Gifts For LA Galaxy and these Luxurious 'Welcome Home' Themed Settlement Gifts. 

Sustainability and Usability Gift Design

Eco-friendly and functional gift boxes and bags along with sustainable and useful gift contents are more popular than ever before. This is especially true if sustainability and environmental awareness are core values of the corporation sending the gifts. It’s a great way to practice what you preach.

When you send a gift, you want the gift recipient to appreciate the gesture, of course, but you also want the recipient to make use of every item in the gift design. We are seeing companies place value on the functionality of the gift design and making sure it’s not just stuffed full of filler-type gifts that will get tossed shortly after the gift is opened. 

We carefully curate each gift so that there is very little waste. We are obsessed with making sure that each gift item has a purpose within the gift, right down to the container, box or bag that each gift comes in.

For more inspiration on useful and functional gift designs, you might like these Beach Themed Gift Sets For Corporate Incentive Tips or our Top Corporate Gift Designs With Branded Tote Bags. Speaking of gift bags, be sure to check out our new Quick and Easy Branded Tote Bags For Events and Welcome Gifts.

Experience Based Gift Sets

Gift boxes with experiential themes are an absolute must to consider when curating corporate gift boxes in this day and age. Experiences and activities that are thoughtful and unexpected create lasting memories, which is the ultimate goal of any corporate marketing effort. 

We’re seeing more and more companies aim to get their gift recipients out of the office and away from the screen with a custom curated experience or unique activity gift set. Experience themed corporate gift set ideas are endless. Movie night, game night, cooking, gardening, cocktail hour, and fitness themed gifts are all extremely popular. 

Businesses that curate an experience-based gift that makes sense with their event or their company’s core values - that’s the ultimate corporate gift!

For more experience-based gift ideas, you might like these Baking Themed Gift Sets For Google or these Custom Fondue Set Corporate Gifts.

Alcohol Adjacent Gifting Themes

It’s no secret that alcohol sets a celebratory tone and gives off a luxurious vibe in any gift design, however not everyone likes or wants to partake in drinking. Mocktails and thoughtfully crafted non-alcoholic drinks are trending in restaurants, which is translating over into corporate gift curation. There is a huge movement towards no longer sending alcohol in corporate gift boxes and instead curating a gift around a cocktail theme.

Designing alcohol-adjacent or booze-inspired gift sets is definitely on trend in corporate gifting since not everyone drinks alcohol and the corporations sending gift boxes aren’t sure who drinks and who doesn’t. This way those who consume alcohol can simply add their own and those who don’t, can celebrate with an alcohol-free mocktail version - a win-win for everyone!

For more alcohol inspired gift designs, you might like these Luxurious Make-Your-Own Cocktail Kits or these At-Home Cocktail Gift Sets For Google.

Purpose Driven Gifting

Gifts that give back by donating to special causes are here to stay. Companies want to make an impact on their gift recipients and their larger community at the same time. Whether the gifting company donates to causes based on their proceeds from selling gift boxes, or the makers of the gift contents are the ones donating to causes near and dear to them, businesses big and small are looking to make an impact with their client gifting.

Purpose driven gifting is hugely popular as companies strive to ensure that their gifts make sense with their specific goal in the moment as well as their overall business’ mission. 

For more gifts-with-a-mission, check out our Give Back Collection of ready-to-ship-gifts that donate to a worthy cause with each purchase. You might also like this post on How To Convey Your Company's Core Values Through Gifting.

How your company gifts and what your company gifts is just as important as the timing of your gifts. Corporations are turning towards carefully curated gift designs to communicate their brand values and show appreciation for their employees, clients, referrals and more. It says a lot about your business when you send a thoughtful, yet, memorable gift that sticks with your recipients long after your gift has been opened.

No matter your reason for corporate gifting, you can be sure that our gift design team knows what’s on trend and what gift themes will have the most impact. Consider your corporate gifting’s mission accomplished! 

To ask questions or get started with corporate gifts, schedule a free video consultation with a member of our gifting Design Team. We’d love to talk with you and help you achieve your corporate gifting goals. No commitment is required to talk with our team, and we look forward to hearing from you! 

Happy corporate gifting!

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