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The "what" is even tougher to decide. A Chicago building supply firm recently gave a photographer a fine briefcase though he had only done a few brochures for them. Technically, he was head of his own company. A second man, who bought $2,500,000 worth of products, got the nuts—2 Ibs. of pistachios. Technically, he was a minor contact. When the wives of the two men met at a party and compared loot, the sparks started flying. Liquor is supposed to be the all-purpose gift, —unless it happens to go to a teetotaler who has no use for drinkers. Food is pretty good—it gets the wives on the company's side. But Chicago's Wilding Picture Productions learned to stop sending baskets of fruit; most of its clients were wintering in Florida, returned home to find a basket of rotting fruit on the back porch.
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There are times when Santa simply cannot win. "Last year," says the San Francisco public relations man for a major U.S. airline, "we sent turkeys to city editors and managing editors in our area, and a couple of bottles of choice wine to other men on the newspapers. So one of these guys that got wine told me: 'O.K., so I'm on the B list,' and then proceeded to chop our name out of every story he handled—except crashes, of course." Some companies simply pass out catalogues for the customers to check off, or send $100 gift certificates. In not a few cases they discover later that the recipient does not do enough business to produce $100 profit in a year's time; in others the certificate comes bouncing back with a stern lecture on the evils of bribing.
A few companies are trying a new kind of present; they donate to charity in the name of friends and customers. A lot more will stop trying to get the jump on the competition and give Christmas back where it belongs —to the kiddies. Says Glidden Co. President Dwight P. Joyce: "All this giving doesn't accomplish a thing. The customer is no longer impressed by gifts. The only thing that does impress him is product and price."