Gift cards have pretty much come full circle. When they first started getting really popular, I don’t know maybe 10 or 15 years ago, it was really exciting to get one because it meant the possibilities were wide open to purchase whatever you wanted from that particular store.
It was just a little piece of plastic, nothing flashy, usually taped inside of a generic Christmas card, but it was truly a gift. Freedom. A new, fresh kind of freedom.
Then you got the same thing the next year. And then you started getting more gift cards, and more gift cards, and the excitement started wearing down a little, cause it wasn’t new anymore. Yeah, it’s cool being able to spend money on what you want, but it wasn’t exciting to get a gift card.
And that’s really what we want, the excitement.
But a couple years ago, and definitely this past Christmas, companies have purposefully gone out of there way to make gift cards exciting again.
Have you seen the packaging on them? It’s beautiful and inviting.
Now the gift card comes in a box of some sort. It’s elaborate. It’s thought out. The gift card is situated just so, usually with two little finger tabs that are begging for us to reach in and touch the treasure.
Cause that’s the excitement of real gifts. The reaching in!!
And the boxes are nice too. It’s all marketing, but it truly makes for a better experience.
I’m telling you, there were meetings at GAP, Target, WholeFoods, Macy’s, everywhere about how to make gift cards exciting again.
And now this brings be to the grand finale, the reason I’ve been thinking about the gift card business all day.
The same thing needs to happen with album/song art or packaging.
It used to be awesome and people got excited by it.
Now they don’t.
How could we bring it back around?
It’s still all about the song (just like it’s all about the actual fact that the gift card means I have money to spend), but I think we need to wake up to the thought that there’s an opportunity to bring music packaging/art back around.
Or maybe it’s playlists on Spotify or Beats. Playlists are boring to make, boring to send, boring to receive. How could we make them exciting to receive?
There’s your billion dollar idea for the day.
