Now there are a host of online platforms are perfect to make a last-minute holiday list. However, they will come in quite handy year-round especially as online registries for a number of special or generic gift-giving occasions. Prime among them Amazon.com, is one place to compile a list of DVDs, coveted books, and whatever else under the sky.

While Amazon.com is a great resource for the users who already are well aware of exactly what they want, it tends to fall short in terms of turning up interesting and unique items you perhaps not have thought of otherwise, like a military lace-up boots pair trimmed in fur, a vintage Polaroid camera or a high-tech juicer

Wantful is a site that serves just like a virtual personal shopper, which is assigned to skillfully pick a selection of items for each visitor on your exclusive holiday shopping list. Here’s how it works:

• After signing up, shoppers will answer queries about the individual they are seeking a present for, describing the recipient’s gender, tastes as well preferences, like whether he or she enjoys cooking or reading. The relationship to a gift recipient is also considered.
• The website generates 16 items in your specified price range it thinks might well be appropriate gifts; it will print a physical book listing the items and also mail it to recipient of the gift. (Those last-minute gift givers in a hurry can also send their catalogs by mail.)
• The recipient then will choose a gift from the list; the giver is charged. Wantful has populated its lists by teaming up with various vendors and merchants. It offers hundreds of gift ideas; the lower-end ones starting around $30, whereas the most expensive topping out around $500.

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In ‘America’s Sweetheart’, Billy Crystal’s character, super-publicist Lee dishes out pearls of wisdom on promotional strategies to his underling. One of them is this:

“Survival Rule no. 3, kid, you’re not here to love anybody, you’re here to promote a movie, that’s it – period. Say you’re here and you got word that your mother died, got hit by a bus or something. You go downstairs, shed a tear and say…It’s a shame, she would’ve loved this movie.”

And that’s how the cookie crumbles. Everything is about promotion and everybody wins in the game. The magazine editor wins with baskets of freebies, the movie producer wins with free merchandise that makes his characters look hip and the company wins with rising sales figures. It all began rather innocuously some time ago but burst in everybody’s face with Dil Chahta Hai where an MRF tyre was shot at close range from a stylish angle. Quite an ad.

Today it is all about selling the product, and boy does bollywood sell! Think ‘Bunty aur Babli’ when Rani Mukherjee’s patiala salwaars made sales shoot up. So clothing brands immediately latched on to what they rightly saw as a great promotional strategy. If Farah Khan wanted to sell Om Shanti Om, Shopper’s Stop wanted to sell its clothes; the two teamed up and the clothing brand stocked the movie’s clothing line, which ignited the 70s craze in Indian fashion. Kareena has donned a new look altogether for Globus and is all set to launch her own line of clothing through the company.

Today brands are in on the PR formula. Widespread advertisement through films (for a price of course) and goodwill promotion through corporate events is the best deal a brand can strike up, and the best way a corporation can reach out for mass appeal. It’s not for nothing that ABN Amro teamed up with fashion’s enfant terrible to design credit cards! Notepads do the best business for one is always needed at PR events to give to journalists. On a more strategic note, companies would do well to tie up with brands for their promotional schemes. Say, the editor of a new fashion magazine can easily rope in any company she wants for her launch party where several celebrities and socialites will be given gift baskets. Once the celebrity falls in love with the product she will definitely visit the store for more.

This is any company’s best bargaining tool. Whether it is a watch or a tyre or a shoe or a dupatta, the gifting strategy has more lanes and bylanes than the New York gridline and at the end of it all, everyone’s a winner.

Tags: Business Gifting
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