Caricatures!

It's holiday gift-giving time. Now, you can do the fruitcake thing, the gift basket thing, the popcorn-in-a-tin thing or the gift certificate thing. But you might also want to consider giving a gift that is truly customized and personal.

Welcome to another edition of Not Your Usual Marketing Tips from JDK Marketing Communications Management.

Cartoonists have been lampooning politicians and royalty with devastating caricatures for over 300 years. This season you might wish to consider presenting a caricature from yourself. Not to devastate, however, but to tickle...

Caricatures make a great, customized gift for your clients or your favored customers...and certainly families and friends on the personal side. Caricatures of loyal (and long-standing) staff make great gifts as well, showing your appreciation for their dedicated service. Yours truly has done caricatures of individual staff members, framed and mounted on company walls. So it’s not only a unique, fun idea…it’s great for morale.

(If you’re new to this column, Yes, I do caricatures. And I’ve been doing them professionally – apart from my copywriting, conceptual and marketing strategy work – for, sheesh, three decades now.…)

Another popular means by which to utilize caricatures -- and no less a marketing tool than a corporate brochure or flyer -- is a Holiday Greetings card...customized to feature the illustrated likenesses of company officers and selected staff, and sent out to clients with a seasonal message thanking them for their business.

(See art above. If it cannot be opened for whatever reason, go to http://www.jdkmarketing.biz/caricaturesbyjoel/ for a look at that one, and others...)

Naturally, caricatures can be applied to ad specialty items as well -- on coffee mugs, beer decanters, tension sqeeze'em toys, and the like. And regardless of season, caricatures can enliven collateral marketing materials, ad campaigns, publicity packages, PowerPoint presentations and trade shows

If you've run out of ideas as we near the holidays, give a thought to caricatures...the "art" of gift-giving.

And in the meantime, frame the first Tuesday of next month for another masterpiece sampling of Not Your Usual Marketing Tips.

Joel Kweskin