Those of you who have the burden of knowing me know that each year at this time I rant and rail about how companies mishandle “Merry Christmas.”

If I say it, you should say it back. Don’t you think?

If I say “Happy Hanukkah,” you should say that back too. Right?

And if Kwanzaa is your thing, and you say “Happy Kwanzaa,” then that’s what you should hear back.

I guess it began about five years ago when I learned that Wendy’s, those square-patty fast food sellers, decreed that their employees would not be allowed to say Merry Christmas, even if the customer said it first. I guess they thought it just wasn’t politically correct.

After I tried it out and, sure enough, the Wendy’s drive-through server said she couldn’t say it back to me (though she wrote it on my bag) I made it a point to say Merry Christmas to all retailers I come into contact with during the holidays. Years ago, I got a lot of “Happy Holidays” responses back. But things seemed to have changed.

It’s Much Better this Year

So far I’ve yet to encounter a single person who doesn’t respond to my Merry Christmas with one of their own. Feels great, and usually gets a smile. I thought the young lady handling the cash register at Best Buy was gonna break her face with that wide, white smile. She must really love Christmas, even though she’s in a job that gains stress during the holidays.

Many companies, like our Texas icon (and client) Whataburger now go the extra mile and put their season’s greetings in signage (see photo here) for all to enjoy. Drive through my favorite Whataburger restaurant the week before Christmas and you’re liable to get a Christmas serenade, sometimes even in Spanish.

More ads this year are sporting a decidedly Merry Christmassy message.

So, give it a whirl. Say Merry Christmas to everyone you encounter and see what you get back. You’ll be hard pressed to stay in a bah humbug mood for long.

In a recent study by ForeSee, more than 77% of the online shoppers polled said they were satisfied with their experience. That’s up from the previous week’s score and 3.3% higher than the same week last year.

More than 54,000 shippers at more than 50 web stores were asked, and the results are a very strong and encouraging trend for online shopping this holiday.

Also encouraging was the fact that online sales during this holiday period are up an estimated 19%. “Green Monday” December 10th, the unofficial start to online holiday shopping, kicked-off the season with a whopping 33% increase over same day sales in 2006. At $881 million, it was the singlest largest revenue day in online shopping history.

In spite of the media’s continued intention to naysay holiday shopping into a perpetual melancholy, online sales continue brisk and upbeat. The online stores we manage are literally booming, with lots of late night and weekend shoppers taking advantage of online convenience.

The Ones That Got Away
November 19, 2007

By Steve Lee

Creative is a funny thing. Designers are creative, no doubt. Directors, managers, AEs do creative things, of course. But somewhere along the way a couple of funny things happen—first, we begin to treat our ideas as if they were our beloved children and second, we moderate our creative thinking based on the client, corporate or agency, for whom we’re creating.

Let’s take on the first premise first.

Idea people, be they creators or designers, fall in love with their own ideas. So, when they present them, it’s hard to let the client tweak them to death. But clients feel like it’s their job to put their fingerprints on everything, including creative ideas. So creators are frustrated by clients that just don’t understand. Enough frustration, and premise number two kicks in.

After a while, and once we’ve grown to know and understand a client better, we alter our creative perspective to align more with what we think the client will allow. So we filter and dilute our creative thinking to match what we perceive to be the client’s level of creative sophistication. If the client will consider taking a risk, so do we. If the client constantly shoots down our ideas, we stop creating for them, except on demand.

Bad, Bad Ideas

Creative is the wonderful output of our clever, brilliant, warped, deranged and addled minds. It doesn’t turn on and off, it just is. We only channel it. Good creatives have good creative ideas all the time. We can’t view these ideas as our children or we would be the most promiscuous beings on the planet.

Try listening to this little voice in your head the next time you’re presenting a creative idea and the client is resisting your brilliance…

LITTLE VOICE: “Don’t like this one? No worries, another bus will be along in just 15 minutes, full to bursting with a whole new batch of new folks. They will listen to great creative.”

Here’s what I do—close my eyes and imagine what it was like in the late 1960′s to walk into a room filled with rich businessmen and ask for millions of dollars to organize some fun activities leading up to a single football game between the best of the American and National Football Leagues.

Now, 40 years later, the Super Bowl is clearly a killer idea. But in 1966, in a time of antiwar protests, Civil Rights marches, political scandal and a raging war in Southeast Asia, the idea of a mega football game probably sounded, well, rather peculiar.

Yet, someone had the sheer strength of self-esteem to create the idea, flesh it out, present it, and persuade a business group to fund it. Wow.

If you’re creative, you are a wellspring of ideas. So don’t latch onto one or another and make out like they’re precious. No worries. Another one is on the way.

No Filter, No Dilution

As for filtering your idea based on what you think the client will approve, stop it.

Filtering good creative, creative that is spot on target, on focus and on brand is wrong for your client and for you.

Granted, some clients will just never catch up to your creative risk-taking, but if you throttle down your ideas, and then they dilute them further, the creative just gets more and more shallow. Continue to push the envelope so that you always begin at a higher starting point. Then the dilution will leave the final executions at the highest possible level.

We keep a box of all the designs, creative executions, plans, proposals, and ideas that the client didn’t buy. It’s called “The Ones That Got Away.” It feels good to look through that box and remind ourselves that we’re pretty good at creating.

Want to live with far less stomach acid in a world that tends to dumb down all great ideas? Two rules: Care far less about the micro specifics of your individual creative ideas, and keep a reminder of all the great ideas that dodged execution.

When you need a creative pick-me-up, just look through all the great things you’ve already created and go back and create more.

Steve Lee is president and CEO of Dallas-based QuickSilver Interactive Group, and one of the new cadre of Brandweek Bloggers. You can check out more about his company at QSIGroup.com He can be reached directly at slee@qsigroup.com