For a greeting card company, November and December are pretty important months to us. Yet the reason we ARE a greeting card company is because each of us think it’s so important to connect with friends and family. As I was coming in to work the other day, I heard a story on NPR, People Answer Stranger’s Christmas Cards. It’s about a gentleman who had sent out 600 Christmas cards and the response he received. Normally, this would be a story about friendship and family ties, but in this case, it was actually a social experiment he was running and the 600 cards were cards sent to complete strangers! His experiment started in 1974 but the responses lasted 15 years!
The story spoke of the Rule of Reciprocation…to me, that feels like too technical a term to put on what is really just common sense – if you get something, you should give back. So I’d like to try my own social experiment and while sending 600 cards seems rather daunting, I’d like to try 50. So I’m going to initiate the 50-Christmas-card-challenge!
The gentleman in the story sent 600 cards and in the first year received 117 replies…so that’s nearly a 20% response rate so if I send 50, I’m hoping for 10 replies back! If I follow in Mr. Kunz’ footsteps, then it would just be a regular Christmas card, it would not indicate anything about being an experiment.
As the holiday season progresses, I’ll keep you up-to-date with how this goes. How about you? Is anyone willing to join me in the 50-Christmas-card challenge??
About Stephanie:
Stephanie is the General Manager for Pear Tree Greetings and when she’s not leading this oh-so brilliant team, she enjoys her time with her husband and kids at home. Her kids, at the adorable ages of 4 and 2, have kept her on her toes lately by painting the walls with crayon and washing her makeup down the sink days before going on air at Twin Cities Live.
I’m sorry to report that other than a couple of undeliverable cards, I didn’t hear back from anyone. Perhaps I needed a bigger sample size or should’ve sent it earlier in the season, but either way, it was a fun experiment. I’d love to hear if you tried this! -Stephanie