The coronavirus has been with us for nearly a year now. With friends and family separated and countries locked down due to travel fears, it’s looking like the Christmas season will be just another “holiday” of quality home time. As bleak as the situation may appear, we as marketers and copywriters have to do what we can to keep the holiday season alive! Join Wordsmith as we explore how to bring back holiday cheer through greeting messages spiced with positivity (and pandemic puns).
The basics on greeting cards and messages
Since it’s risky to go out and socialise at the moment, sending a message to your friends and family is a great way to show them that they are in your thoughts. In marketing, it’s common for brands to send holiday greeting messages to their customers because they want to accomplish two things: (i) to inform customers about any potential sales or promotions, and (ii) to build relationships by making the customer feel good.
The first point is kind of a no-brainer, but the second point is often overlooked. It’s important to remember that not everyone has thoughtful friends and family. For this writer anyway, apart from the usual “Merry Christmas!” messages on WhatsApp and Facebook, I haven’t received an in-depth Christmas card or message since the early 2000s. For people like us, it’s a bit heart-warming to receive personalised seasonal greetings – even if it’s from a faceless corporation or brand who’s ultimately doing it to get us to spend more. Especially in troubling times like these, a simple “Hello, how are you doing?” is a quick and easy way to make people feel appreciated and valued – and when they do, they are more likely to think positively and spend money on the outreaching brand. Of course, we’ll be showing you how to do something more robust than just that!
A good Christmas greeting subverts expectations – like this festive Lego ad on constructive creativity paired to a parody of Louis Armstrong’s classic “What a wonderful world”.
Customising your greetings
Generic Christmas greetings are boring (and best saved for Hallmark cards for the in-laws or mean siblings). How do you go about crafting a more tailored message?
First and foremost, you need to choose a direction. Do you want the message to be humorous? If the message’s recipient is going through hard times and humour doesn’t seem appropriate, perhaps you should opt for positivity instead. Alternatively, if the recipient has helped you out during your struggles in the year, consider showing your gratitude!
Humour (part 1 – memes):
Everyone appreciates a bit of laughter… and after all that’s happened this year, it’s probably in short supply. While the pandemic itself is extremely serious, some of the things that people have done as a result can only make us laugh – like the insanity of hoarding toilet paper or the conspiracy theorists who thought 5G networks caused the virus. Assuming your recipients aren’t one of these people, they’ll probably get a laugh out of it when you make these reference in your greeting.
Using the examples above, when writing a friend, try “I miss you like I miss my toilet paper.” Or if you are writing to a customer, try “Fears about the coronavirus riding off of 5G networks may spread fast, but not as fast as the lost savings if you miss out on our Christmas sale!”
Humour (part 2 – puns):
Puns are fantastic fun, and because it’s Christmas, you don’t need to worry too much about whether or not they are good – like a dad joke, all that matters are getting someone to laugh or to roll their eyes and groan. You might want to sneak puns into your messages by tweaking traditional festive sayings or to replace certain words with near sounding alternatives. Like so:
“It’s the most wonderful time of year for social distancing.”
“As it snow happens, wearing a mask all day soots me.”
“Quaranteened (quarantined with teens) over Christmas with the kids? We may have something that can help…”
Positivity
It’s easy for people to dwell on the bad, so it’s up to you to help lift them up. To do that, help readers focus on the future – more importantly, give them hope about the good yet to come. Mixbook Photo Co. provides two beautiful examples of a positive message:
“Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.” ~ Sir Winston Churchill.
“There’s light at the end of the tunnel, and if anyone can reach it, it’s you. Happy holidays and best wishes always.”
The examples above are more suited for family and friends who you know are in a tight spot, but the same message can be tweaked for a more general or business-oriented approach – like “With 2021 almost upon us, a blank slate awaits. May the new year and every year beyond be filled with joy and prosperity.”
Gratitude
Nothing shows Christmas spirit like being grateful for the people around you. Even if the year went relatively smoothly for you, there’s nothing wrong with being appreciative – simply thanking your friends and family for being there with you is a good enough reason to be happy!
“You set me up when I was at my low – use this card to redeem one free drink on me when bars reopen.”
“2020 was awful, but being around you made it bearable.”
Businesses can try showing gratitude towards your customers:
“This year has been challenging for everyone, and we greatly appreciate you being with us all the way.”
Year in review
Greeting messages can also be a way to share how your year went. This kind of message is best saved for recipients who you haven’t caught up with in a long time (ie. a classmate from university) – a safe option when you aren’t sure how they are doing and don’t want to make any assumptions – or as a general greeting. Of course, you’ll need to be humble about it, otherwise you’d sound like a bragger and defeat the purpose of Christmas.
“Political tomfoolery, a global epidemic and social unrest marked 2020, but hope springs forth for 2021.”
“Home is where the heart is, and although we spent most of 2020 at home, we learned a lot from the experience.”
When we think of greeting messages, lame boilerplate lines often spring to mind. However, greeting messages can be so much more when you take the effort to tie in trends and seasonal puns. Yes, they can still be cheesy, but it’s ultimately the intention behind them that matters – to motivate and empower their recipients, and to create a stronger relationship with your brand. Even though everyone is stuck at home, you can make your brand a part of the holiday festivities!
Double negatives offer dual interpretations of a sentence – like the clever use of negative space in a picture to create two distinct visuals (ie. Batman or the Penguin depending on your orientation of the image above).
A flexible interpretation
Sometimes, double negatives can create unclear meanings – as illustrated by the earlier example with the mayor. To determine the correct interpretation of a double negative, Taggart and Wines point out that you must pay attention to the context and intonation. Let’s say you and your buddies are watching the latest beauty pageant, and you ask your friend how he’d rank one of the contestants.
“She’s not unattractive,” he says.
Is the contestant attractive or not then? If your buddy places emphasis on the un, it could mean he thinks the contestant is neither ugly nor beautiful. Inversely, if he emphasises on the not, it could mean he thinks she’s rather pretty!
Here’s another example:
“That’s not bad.”
Ah the classic not bad. One of the most commonly used phrases that most people don’t even realise is a double negative! Again, we need to examine which part of the double negative is emphasised when it is read aloud. If not is stressed, then it means things are going pretty well! Alternatively, if bad is stressed, it means things could be better. See how things can get a bit confusing when we look at double negatives from a text-only perspective? It’s one of the reasons why crafty writers are fond of double negatives – it’s easy to pretend to like something while secretly bashing it and “politely” avoiding confrontation altogether!
Double negatives, while usually considered poor form in grade school, do have their uses every now and then. They can be a fun literary trick to get people to look at things differently, especially if they blindly trust in Lowth’s rule. If Tom Jones don’t got no problem with it, then neither should we!