EPISODE 154 | Guest: Debbie DeWitt, marketing communications manager for Visix
Get ready to spread some holiday cheer on screen! In this episode, we’re diving into the magic of holiday content for digital signs and how planning ahead can make your campaigns not just easy, but truly impactful.
From eye-catching campaigns and fun contests to fundraisers and kudos, there’s so much more you can do than just share a single holiday message. Listen to discover creative ways to celebrate the season, attract more viewers and make your screens more engaging.
- Hear lots and lots and lots of ideas for content and campaigns
- Discover how to make your messaging more inclusive, authentic and engaging
- Explore content ideas for basic holidays, lists and fun facts, social events and retail
- Learn about some unusual holidays and traditions (baby jumping!)
- Get links to popular websites to help you plan your content
Subscribe to this podcast: Podbean | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube | RSS
Get more creative content ideas for your screens in our free Digital Signage Content Guide
Transcript
Derek DeWitt: It’s the end of November, December is just around the corner, and this is a great time to talk about holiday content, because obviously the end of the year is here, and that means end of the year celebrations are here. But you can do more than just throwing up Happy Thanksgiving messages or Merry Christmas messages. And Debbie DeWitt, marketing communications manager for Visix, is here with me today on the podcast with lots of ideas. Thanks for talking to me today, Deb.
Debbie DeWitt: Thanks, Derek. It’s great to be here.
Derek DeWitt: I’d like to thank Deb for talking to me, and, of course, everybody out there for listening. Don’t forget you can subscribe, and you can follow along with a transcript on the Visix website that has plenty of helpful links as well.
I mean, I rather think holidays is kind of really one of the easiest topics for digital signage content that you can come up with.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, absolutely. It’s great because you can plan it all out. You can design and schedule them all in advance, ’cause you know when they’re gonna happen.
Derek DeWitt: Right, exactly. Yeah. Obviously we need a little basic design advice, ’cause as we know, sometimes people are in charge of a digital signage system that maybe aren’t trained in that sort of a thing. One thing you want to think about is you want images and colors that communicate the particular season or holiday that you’re trying to talk about.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, absolutely. And we’ve got a couple of other episodes that talk about design advice, but for holidays, I think one of the big things you can do is change your layout background.
I mean, maybe you use a different animation or if you’re not using animation, add it in; you can have snow falling, you can have leaves blowing, things like that. And also, there are a lot of great sites out there with royalty-free images like Pixabay and others, and they have images and videos that you can use. You know, as long as you’re not selling anything, you can get the royalty-free ones. You can put those right in, in AxisTV Design.
Derek DeWitt: Right. And of course, you want to localize the content, make it specific to your geographical location and obviously your audience. And you wanna be inclusive. Don’t just do Merry Christmas, you know?
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. I think that’s really important. But I would say it doesn’t mean you can’t show one country’s holidays to another audience. It can be fun to crosspollinate that way.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah. Obviously, it’s better to cover everyone than to end up ignoring or marginalizing somebody who’s in your audience.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. And like you had mentioned, you know, in this episode we’re talking a lot about Thanksgiving and Christmas, but these ideas should inspire you for all different holidays, especially ones that also occur in December. There’s a lot more than just Christmas and the traditional holiday seasons for Western countries.
Derek DeWitt: And, you know, year round as well. Going outside the U.S., you can discover lots of other cultures and traditions and honestly, even inside the U.S. I mean the first two that pop to mind that are most common around the time of Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, don’t make an assumption that everybody in your organization celebrates the Christian Christmas. Maybe not. I’m sure some do. It’s always good, like you said, include as many people as you can. But especially if you have branches or offices elsewhere, either across the country or in other countries, you might have employees or members of the public that celebrate other holidays. So, you really need to think about it when you’re planning it out.
Derek DeWitt: Now, obviously in Christian countries, we have Christmas on December 25th. For Europeans, the big day is December 24th. Advent actually starts on December 1st and runs all the way to Christmas Eve. December 5th or 6th, depending on where you are, is St. Nicholas Day. For Catholics, the 8th is Immaculate Conception Day, which is also the day that Buddhists mark Siddhartha’s enlightenment on a day called Bodhi Day. So, if you’ve got Buddhists in your audience, December 8th is a great day there.
Debbie DeWitt: Nice.
Derek DeWitt: The 12th is the Feast Day of our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico. Obviously, as we said, Hanukkah. Maybe you got some Wiccans or Neo Pagans.
Debbie DeWitt: Yay!
Derek DeWitt: They celebrate Yule, which starts on December 21st and runs all the way to New Year’s Day. Sometimes the Muslim month of Ramadan falls in December. It floats throughout the year because it’s based on a lunar calendar. The Hindu Champa Sashti festival usually comes either in late November or early December. After Christmas, British people have Boxing Day, which is a day to kind of go out and do good deeds or share the wealth with others.
And, by the way, we’re talking about Christians; don’t forget Orthodox Christians. Their Christmas is in the first week of January, and their New Year’s comes a week after that. And obviously, Asian cultures have their New Year’s, depending again, somewhere between January 21st and February 20th, ’cause they also use lunar calendars. So, you know, New Year’s is also part of this whole holiday season.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. And there are a lot of websites out there that can tell you when these dates are.
Derek DeWitt: However, I will say some websites are not accurate. Sadly, the web is full of a lot of inaccurate information. An example is that Bodhi Day I mentioned, which is December 8th, but some websites have it as December 18th. I feel like that was probably just a typo, but it’s there on the website. So, don’t just use the very first source that you find, or find a source that is known to be reliable and accurate, and then, you can go ahead and use that.
If there are Buddhists among the people you’re trying to communicate to, and you know that, ask them. When is Bodhi Day? Do you know? You know, like, verify the dates with the people who celebrate those holidays. They know.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. And of course, as we always say, you need to be sensitive. Don’t just assume something, you know.
Derek DeWitt: Right.
Debbie DeWitt: Maybe word it like a question, you know, do you know when Ramadan starts this year? You know, don’t just walk up to somebody and be like, hey, Ahmed, when’s Ramadan? Like, Ahmed’s Christian! Like, he may not know. Or I would always argue there are trusted sites. Wikipedia is a pretty trusted site.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah.
Debbie DeWitt: It is crowdsourced, it is crowd-edited. I think you can probably find it online without having to, you know, walk around and ask.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, that’s true. And you might even find, like we said, colors. Obviously Christmas, it’s green and red, which are opposites, which is interesting. But other cultures and other holidays may have certain colors associated with those days as well. So, just do the research and make it all match up.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. And I think it can be fun, too, to go through, you know, you can do different styles. Christmas imagery has changed a lot, quite frankly, since Christmas became a thing. We think it’s always been around, but it always hasn’t. And the imagery, you know, that the bearded Santa that we all have in our heads is actually kind of modern, and you could actually go back and get some different imagery. So, you can really have fun with it.
Derek DeWitt: That’s true. You could also, if you wanted to, you could educate people about the origins of these things. How many people out there actually know that Saint Nicholas, who is kind of, sort of who Santa Claus is based on, was actually a Greek guy born in Turkey, you know?
Debbie DeWitt: Right.
Derek DeWitt: Now, apart from just this end of the year stuff, you know, there are holidays all year round, like every day.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. And every day has multiple days. So, a lot of them are, you know, obviously very recognized, even observed with school closings, things like that. But some of them are just fun ones. And it’s like, again, this is why I really recommend holiday content, especially for those people who are struggling to kind of keep things new and fresh on their screens. So, I mean, almost every day celebrates something or someone.
There’s a website out there called NationalToday, and again, we’ll have a link. It’s a good way to search for holidays, ’cause you can just look at what’s up today. That’s not in advance, but you could do it last minute. You can also search by month or by day and by types of holidays. And then they also have another one, which is famous people’s birthdays. So, you could always do something fun like that.
Derek DeWitt: Right. Especially if that particular person is relevant to your organization. You know, if there’s a famous educator and you’re a university, especially if it’s somebody who went to your university, or a Nobel Prize winner from your school or whatever, hey, mention their birthday. Why not?
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. And I think it’s fun to include a quote if they’ve got something they’ve said that’s either fun or inspirational.
Derek DeWitt: But again, verify that they really said that.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah.
Derek DeWitt: Don’t just grab a meme off Facebook. You know, Deb mentioned NationalToday. There are other websites out there. NationalDayCalendar.com has some fun ones as does DaysOfTheYear.
And you know, some of them are, we don’t want to call them holidays, but they’re days that mark a certain thing. Some of my favorites are May 4th, Star Wars Day. It’s a bit of a pun on, “May the fourth be with you.”
Debbie DeWitt: And also with you.
Derek DeWitt: And also with you. And Talk Like a Pirate Day, which is September 19th every year where aaargh you’re supposed to talk like a cliche pirate.
Debbie DeWitt: We should do a podcast on that day in pirate speak.
Derek DeWitt: Just in pirate speech. For your math nerds out there, there’s Pi Day, P-I day, which is March 14th or 3.14 in the American way of doing things. And if you know what pi is, then that makes sense.
Debbie DeWitt: Mm. Always good to include the nerds. Well, today is National Cake Day. Tomorrow is National Craft Jerky Day.
Derek DeWitt: Craft jerky?
Debbie DeWitt: Craft jerky.
Derek DeWitt: So, what is that like venison and bison?
Debbie DeWitt: I don’t know. Or just, you know, artisans making jerky.
Derek DeWitt: Hmm.
Debbie DeWitt: This is National Game and Puzzle Week, and November is Banana Pudding Lovers Month. So, I mean, I will say that’s fun because if you find something there, you know, these websites we’ve mentioned also have like, what this month is, monthly celebrations or themes lend themselves to a campaign. So, that’s a really nice way to do something, like, every Friday about it. Use a visual theme, do weekly trivia, you know, put up recipes or traditions. It just lends itself to more content than just a single message.
Derek DeWitt: But here’s the thing, don’t just do Banana Pudding Lovers Month. If you’re the only person that likes banana pudding. Like I personally don’t particularly like it, so I would go…
Debbie DeWitt: <Gasp!>
Derek DeWitt: I would go ugh! Right? Ask yourself, for each one of these, which would be interesting to your viewers. Know your audience. And also, there are so many of these, you can’t possibly put them all up, you know. So figure out what your audience likes and then try and tailor your content to them.
Debbie DeWitt: I mean, we preach that all the time on here. But I’d say even within the campaigns or within that holiday message, what’s interesting to your audience? I mean, some basic things, some examples that we’ve done at Visix and things. So, for the 4th of July, Independence Day, we make sure to put up a link to firework safety tips.
Derek DeWitt: Oh, there you go.
Debbie DeWitt: You know, when it comes to Easter, we put up a bunny adoption warning, because most bunnies that get bought for Easter get dumped after Easter. So, you know, we put up the Happy Easter, but then we have a link that goes with it, ’cause we publish all of our stuff to our intranet as well. You can have some quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. on his day. Put up some fun facts about Pride Month, tell a little bit about its history.
Derek DeWitt: I mean, there are tons of listicles out there about this stuff, especially as those holidays start to approach. And at the beginning of the year, a lot of people, it’s kind of slow in the news cycle usually, and a lot of people come up with, hey, these are the craziest holidays this year, or something like that. So, you’ll find lots and lots of lists out there.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. There’s definitely a lot of source material you can pull from.
Derek DeWitt: First off, the basics. These are your observed or national holiday messages that you post each month or week or on the day of the holiday. You know, bank closings, schools are closed, but even things that, where that doesn’t happen, but everybody knows them like Flag Day or Arbor Day.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. And I will say you mentioned, you know, put them up the week or the day of the holiday. It’s more fun and engaging to cover at least the week instead of just putting it up the day of.
Derek DeWitt: Right. Surprise! It’s Arbor Day!
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. Well, you may have people who are out of the office or off campus, you know, so you definitely want to give it a few days run.
Derek DeWitt: Probably stick it up on your intranet as well. You can stick it up in your digital signage HTML feed and stick it up on the intranet, so people working from home also can be informed.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. And very quickly, I’ll just mention that we actually have 35 free holiday message designs already done for you, ready to be posted. Those are in the resources section of our website. You can just go on there and grab those.
Derek DeWitt: Right. And as I mentioned, bank holidays, school closings, office closings and so on. Obviously, people are gonna need to know about these and, you know, a little advance notice would be good.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, definitely. And in addition to putting up the individual closings, I would go ahead and put like a full list of holiday closings that shows up at least a couple times a month.
Derek DeWitt: There may be things going on in the community as well, like, I don’t know, there’s a Labor Day parade or, you know, whatever, Memorial Day parade, a Thanksgiving parade in your town or city. Maybe the local ice skating rink is opening and it becomes a big deal. So, things like that, while not technically holidays are events.
Debbie DeWitt: Well, they’re related to holidays in a lot of ways, or in a lot of times. So, I think that’s good for that campaign we were talking about.
The other thing I’ll say is think about doing a countdown to the holiday, or the closing or the event, whatever it is. Countdowns are weirdly good at building suspense and excitement versus just having the thing pop up and say, hey, we’re gonna be closed, you know, two weeks from today or whatever. You do a countdown that says, you know, 13 days to the December holidays or whatever. People really love that.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah. I, I fall for it. I see a countdown and I go, ooh, what are we counting down to?
Debbie DeWitt: I know, it’s exciting.
Derek DeWitt: I get excited. Even get more local than that. When’s the office holiday party? What are the rules for Secret Santa or for Toys for Tots or something like that?
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. And around those end of year holidays and also around summer, especially for schools and school districts or universities, they’re gonna be a lot of people on vacation. They’re gonna take vacation, they’re gonna be going off. So, a great thing to show on your screens year round is a list of who’s out of the office, you know, unless it’s a giant list. If you’ve got a hybrid office, of course you’re gonna be like, well, everybody but three people are out of the office. Don’t do that. What you want to do is say, who’s on PTO. You know, or you can actually for that hybrid office show who’s in the office today.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah. It actually might be a smaller list, too.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. Well, and it’s all pulled from data, so you don’t have to actually update it. It can just pull from your calendar.
Derek DeWitt: Sure, sure. Now let’s kind of stick them together. Lists and fun facts. These are things that people just love. You know, it’s just a quick way to engage people. They’re not gonna do anything with the information, but it is a way to get them to look at the digital signs.
Debbie DeWitt: Oh, yeah! Again, we talked about crosspollinating, educating people who may not know about these things. So, I think it’s good to just start with your plan and do a monthly list of holidays, or check out one of these websites that has a list of holidays around the world. You know, pick your favorites and maybe do like a did you know video or a message or something like that to pique people’s interest.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah. And there are a lot of just weird and wonderful traditions around the world. I’m gonna toss a few out that I found.
Debbie DeWitt: There are.
Derek DeWitt: December 23rd is La Noche de Rábanos, or Night of the Radishes, in Mexico. It’s a big radish festival.
Debbie DeWitt: Nice.
Derek DeWitt: In Norway on December 24th, it is traditional to hide all the brooms, so that witches cannot fly around. One of my favorites in the U.S. is February 2nd, Groundhog Day, which I loved way before the movie.
Debbie DeWitt: But I love the movie.
Derek DeWitt: The movie is also great. The Hindu festival of Holi is very colorful since it involves large crowds of people pelting one another with colored powders. In 2025, that’s happening on March 14th.
Debbie DeWitt: Makes for great imagery.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, actually, it really does. Yeah. And it’s a really fun one. And some of them are just beautiful. There’s a thousand-year-old Japanese festival called Hina Matsuri, which celebrates girls with ornate dolls and sticky rice cakes wrapped in pickled cherry blossoms. I mean, that’s pretty interesting. If you have anybody with a Japanese connection or your company’s a Japanese subsidiary or whatever, that’s happening on March 3rd.
Obviously, we know St. Patrick’s Day. That’s a classic one. I like to call it amateur night.
Debbie DeWitt: Right. Stay indoors. Do not get on the roads.
Derek DeWitt: Do not get on the roads. Though, in Ireland, St. Patrick’s Day is actually a pretty serious religious holiday and not really a day for getting plastered.
Debbie DeWitt: Sure.
Derek DeWitt: In the town of Buñol, Spain, there’s an annual tomato fight called La Tomatina, which happens the last Wednesday in August every year. And around the area of Sasamón, also in Spain, there is what’s one of the oddest things I’ve ever heard of. A week long baby jumping festival.
Debbie DeWitt: You jump babies?
Derek DeWitt: You jump babies. Men dressed as devils jump over mattresses, and on the mattresses, babies born in the last year are lying, and the men jump over and this… it sounds weird.
Debbie DeWitt: I was kidding. I thought it was gonna be babies jumping, not jumping babies.
Derek DeWitt: No, you’re jumping babies, like they’re the hurdle, you know? And the idea is, I guess it cleanses them of the original sin they’re born with or something. I mean, it sounds weird. It’s called El Colacho. But it goes all the way back to 1620, so, you know, it’s been around for a long time.
Debbie DeWitt: Well, I had a feeling it wasn’t invented this decade.
Derek DeWitt: Right. Sometimes you get these new ones. This is another thing to keep in mind is people are always inventing new ones.
For example, in the town of Lopburi, Thailand, they have a rather sizable population of around a thousand of a very specific kind of monkey. And so, to increase tourism, they invented a Monkey Buffet Festival every year, where people honor the monkeys and other wildlife by giving them fruits and vegetables. Weirdly enough, sometimes encasing those fruits and vegetables in blocks of ice. I don’t really know why they do that. Maybe to make it more difficult for the monkeys or to keep the fruit fresh. I don’t know why they do that, but they do.
Debbie DeWitt: Alright. That’s a great list.
Derek DeWitt: I wanna see that baby jumping thing.
Debbie DeWitt: Oh boy, I don’t know. Yeah, right after we run with the bulls.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah.
Debbie DeWitt: But yeah, like you said, there are lots of lists out there online to pull from. But again, I’m just gonna say, you threw some dates out there. Double check, go online, make sure your dates are accurate.
I have a few ideas of things you can do with these holidays. You know, we had talked about putting up a, did you know. You can also put up things related. We talked about recipes, like for your favorite holiday dishes. You could share music playlists that are themed on a holiday. You can say what are the most popular holiday movies. And even list some gift ideas.
You talked about Secret Santa before, so it made me think, hey, list some gift ideas. You know, what are the most popular tech gifts this year? What are gifts for kids by age range? That’s really, really good.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you could even let people vote online and then share their own picks.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. And I can tell you from personal experience, we’ve done this at Visix on our own digital signage where we put up weird holiday traditions in December, and then we had people try to guess what country it was from. And it was very successful and very interesting, and we got a lot of feedback. It was really good.
Derek DeWitt: And if you correctly guess the Norway one, you get a pickled herring.
Debbie DeWitt: Well, I think the biggest prize needs to go for baby jumping.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, right, right. Obviously, social media is a another great way. It’s kind of an extension of your digital signage and digital branding.
Debbie DeWitt: And a source for your digital signage, too.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, yeah, that’s true. It also gets more people involved. I mean, you can pull in from social feeds, or you can let people submit things, I don’t know, maybe via an intranet form or something like that.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah. Have people share photos, have them share memories. That’s really fun. People love to see kid pictures of the people they work with; I don’t know why.
Derek DeWitt: It is weird.
Debbie DeWitt: People love pet pictures. I will say that our Halloween costume contest, we do it for the humans, but we also ask people, please, please, if you dressed up your dog or cat, please show us.
You know, favorite holiday traditions. You can hold contests. Like I said, we did a costume contest for Halloween, an ugly sweater contest or festive sweater contest is very popular. You can do gingerbread or cookie decorating, and some of this people will do on their own. One year what we did is we bought these little cookie kits, little gingerbread cookie kits and sent them to everybody. They were, you know, like under 10 bucks each or something. And then had everybody submit their photos. House decorations, you know, for Halloween, your lights for Christmas or at the holidays, whatever you’re celebrating, those can all be very popular.
Derek DeWitt: And, of course, you and your whole family covered in lots of splashes of color after Holi.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, exactly. I mean, it’s great if you go out and participate in one of those community events we talked about. Maybe your kid was in the, the parade, the Thanksgiving Day parade. God, I hope that she was dressed as a little turkey. That would be awesome. But you know, like, send those photos in. People are very interested in that kind of thing.
Another one that’s fun is ask people if they have New Year’s resolutions. Now that one again, post it your screens, but make sure it’s also on your intranet, somewhere that people can comment and do feedback, or like we said, on a social media portal.
Derek DeWitt: Sure. And, you know, New Year’s resolutions, I know a lot of people do them. My resolution every year is to make no resolutions, and I am successful at that.
Debbie DeWitt: Every single year.
Derek DeWitt: Every single year. But I know a lot of people use this as an opportunity to kind of kickstart themselves to eat healthier and exercise and things like this. So, it’s actually a really good opportunity to promote health and wellness programs, gym memberships, you know, advice, things like this. Hey, don’t forget, you know, do desk stretches. Or if your organization has some kind of codified program, here’s how you do it. Or who knows? Maybe even you could have like a New Year’s resolution discount or something.
Debbie DeWitt: Actually, it’s funny you say that. My New Year’s resolution is that we should publish a DSDR episode about health and wellness messaging in January.
Derek DeWitt: Oh, well there you go. Perfect. It’s absolutely perfect.
Obviously, when we think of things like Christmas and many of these other ones, you know, it’s the season of shopping and gluttony, and you can advertise that sort of thing. Local vendors and partners, or if you happen to have onsite shops or venues, you can show promotions, you can show discounts, you can show maybe a way to get gift cards, handing out gift cards and so on.
A lot of places, especially at the end of the year, they’ll do clearances, you know, campus bookstores. Hey, we have all this old corporate swag; we’re getting rid of our 2024 T-shirts in preparation for the 2025 T-shirts, so we’re giving them away or we’re selling them for a buck a piece or whatever. These are also just great things to stick up on the signs.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, we’re talking about retail here and when we say that, it doesn’t always have to mean a mall or a retail shop. You know, you might have retail facets within your campus. For example, you can have menu boards with special holiday items. I know, my God, if we have to hear about the pumpkin spice latte one more time at Starbucks.
Derek DeWitt: Which, by the way are not good. I do not like them. It’s official.
Debbie DeWitt: Okay. Don’t alienate our listeners.
Derek DeWitt: If you like them, more power to you. You can have mine, ’cause I don’t like them.
Debbie DeWitt: There you go. One of the other ideas is, it’s a great time for people to cash in loyalty programs, rewards or sign up for a loyalty program, you know? And some even corporations have an online store where you get points and things and then you can, you know, get that corporate swag. So, it’s a great time to start promoting that. Make sure people know what’s available. If they’re not taking advantage of it, you know, ask them why. Try and encourage them to do that.
Also, make sure you’re showing any promotions that you’re offering to your customers, so your employees know what you’re advertising out there.
Derek DeWitt: Since this episode is going up in late November though, the thing that’s on everybody’s minds right now is Thanksgiving and then obviously Christmas. December in the U.S. Is the National Month of Giving after all. So, you know, why not Thanks Giving? Thank your employees and your customers and your students and your visitors and all this.
Thank you for being a part of our organization, thank you for participating, thank you for all the good work you do or for, you know, buying our stuff. I think this really just, it’s no skin off your nose, and it really adds a nice element, I think. It kind of builds, I don’t know, authenticity if you’re doing it right and you mean it. And it just creates a little sense of community, which we now know is part of how people become engaged.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned authenticity. I think that’s the whole point. This is not something that you want to design and schedule in February. You know, this needs to be thought out. You need to be thoughtful while you’re thanking people, what are you thanking them for? Show some KPIs, show some goals they achieved.
Derek DeWitt: Right. Specific stuff from that year.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. You know, share testimonials and comments from clients, you know. Have some internal shout outs, we talk about that a lot. You know, we thank our development team, because they don’t interface with clients, but they are making our product. They are satisfying what we need, you know?
So, highlight those end-of-year goals reached. Make sure you point out any awards or honors that were received, and things like people going out and get a project management certificate, you know? People getting credentials, things like that or even just retaining those credentials. I think those are all great things to thank people for.
Derek DeWitt: Yeah, I think so. And of course, you know, everybody has something that they’re thankful for in their lives. You know, when we were kids, we did the little hand turkey, and we had to write five or six things that we were thankful for.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah.
Derek DeWitt: Again, you can poll your audience, ask them what are they thankful for? And that also interfaces quite nicely with social media.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, absolutely. We always say, any time you can get the audience involved in generating your content, that’s fantastic.
Derek DeWitt: And it’s less work for you.
Debbie DeWitt: That’s true. That’s true.
Charity drives, you know, if December’s the National Month of Giving or you’re thinking about Thanksgiving. At Visix, we do what we call the Helping Hands Charity Drive. Instead of the corporate office just donating to whoever they choose, what we do is we let our employees go out and donate, and then Visix matches up to a certain amount total. So, you know, you can do things like food drives, even blood donation, you know? I think Red Cross or someone like will come to your facility in, like, a portable blood donation van.
Derek DeWitt: Oh, I hope they bring those little powdered sugar cookies.
Debbie DeWitt: Yeah, juice and cookies are a must. You can do Toys for Tots, you know. You can do a coat drive, you know, to give to even Salvation Army.
And we’re talking about winter here, but really when you think about Labor Day or September, when people are going back to school, teachers might need help with school supplies or art supplies. So, you could do a drive for that. So again, we’ve been talking a lot about November, December here, but charity drives are something you can do throughout the year.
Derek DeWitt: And as we said, there’s something every day. Most of them are joyful in some way. They’re about joy, they’re about cheer. Sometimes they’re about remembrance, like Juneteenth or Memorial Day. But even on those more sober sort of holidays, you can engage and educate your audience nonetheless. It doesn’t have to be a downer. It can be…
Debbie DeWitt: Uplifting.
Derek DeWitt: Uplifting, heartfelt. And you know, let’s not forget the sacrifices that some people have made. Provided of course that’s appropriate for your audience. Again, it’s knowing what your audience likes and wants and will respond to, and then designing to meet those desires and having a little bit of fun along the way.
Debbie DeWitt: Always recommended.
Derek DeWitt: Well, that’s a whole bunch of holiday ideas that you can use throughout the calendar year and into the future here on the Digital Signage Done Right podcast.
I’d like to thank my guest today, Debbie Dewitt, marketing communications manager for Visix, for sharing some of her ideas with us today. Thanks, Deb. Ho ho, ho; gobble, gobble, gobble, and all the other holiday noises.
Debbie DeWitt: Yes. I’ll wrap it all up by saying Happy Holidays, Derek!
Derek DeWitt: And of course, happy holidays to all of you out there, thank you for listening. And we mean it when we say that we are thankful that you take the time out of your day to listen to this podcast.