With activity building strongly for Thinking of You Week, which takes place from September 20-26, there’s still time for gift retailers to get involved in the annual campaign which is designed to harness the emotional power of greeting cards to create a wave of love, caring and happiness around the world through encouraging people to send cards to different people during the week.
“This year we’ve had lots of enquiries about involving gifts as people reach out to loved ones to say ‘thinking of you’,” confirms Amanda Fergusson, ceo of the Greeting Card Association (GCA) which organises the initiative. “The isolation experienced by many over the last 18 months has led to more and more people connecting with loved ones by sending a card or a gift to say ‘thinking of you’,” she continued. “2020 was therefore the biggest Thinking of You Week to date and building on that we are delighted to see more retailers than ever embrace the occasion in September 2021.”
Clintons, Cardzone, Sainsburys, B&M, Asda and independent gift and card multiple House of Cards are among the retailers planning in store activity. For ideas to get involved visit www.thinkingofyouweek.cards/
In addition, Royal Mail, which launched a new logo last week to celebrate the campaign, will be unveiling several exciting initiatives, to include a specially commissioned film reminding everyone about the joy of sending and receiving cards. There will also be a special Royal Mail Thinking Of You Week postmark.
Once again, the greeting card industry has embraced the campaign with Paper Yam launching an Instagram competition https://www.instagram.com/paperyamofficial/
Plus, a special verse has been written for the occasion by Shmuncki, highlighting the importance of connecting through cards, which will feature on a Thinking of You Week wall at Top Drawer, which takes place at Olympia from September 12-14.
www.thinkingofyouweek.cards/shmuncki-verse-pens-a-special-poem-for-thinking-of-you-week-2021/
Other exciting activities include a short film, produced for the GCA by Lanther Black, which will be shared on social media.
Thinking Of You Week was first launched in 2014 and has now spread to the US and Australia, encouraging more and more people to use the power of a greeting card to connect with loved ones, to say ‘thinking of you’, to share an image or a joke or to cheer someone up, or just say ‘hello’.
To find out more about getting involved with the Thinking Of You initiative this year, visit www.gca.cards/thinking-of-you-week-2021/