How to Become a Legendary Gift-Giver
Lessons in producing content, culture, and experiences from Jenny Ouano
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I have always embraced the idea that content and marketing should be designed as a Gift™ for your intended audience. If you want to Earn Attention, you must first create value for the recipient, or they will ignore you. (Selfishness is pretty much a universal recipe for failure.) And so, as we enter into a holiday season full of gifting, and also of abundant marketing and content, what better time to explore the secrets of a legendary gift-giver?
Jenny Ouano, my co-founder at Pacific Content and now at The Department of Differentiation, is the most generous and thoughtful gift-giver I have ever met. This wonderful trait is part of what makes Jenny an extraordinary content producer and earner of attention. There is great magic in the giving of gifts, for both the recipient and the giver.
For Jenny, a gift can take many forms – an actual gift from her to another person, an amazing piece of content, a carefully chosen and curated meal, or a mind-blowing multi-day company offsite retreat. In whatever form it takes, Jenny’s Gifts™ have a consistent impact on the recipients – the Gifts™ Blow Their Minds™.
Consider some of the factors that must be present to Blow Their Minds™. The Gift™ must be;
unexpected and surprising
personal, so the recipient feels seen by the gift-giver
highly valued by the recipient
memorable and word-of-mouth-worthy
truly generous - it must not require anything in return from the recipient
Even for a legendary gift-giver like Jenny, doing all this is never easy. “You have to put in the work. You have to put in the work to make the really good quality stuff that people will talk about and remember.”
So What’s In It For Me?
Why create Gifts™ as a marketer if one of the conditions is not to expect anything in return?
Ironically, the generosity and lack of expected reciprocation actually drive a higher likelihood of reciprocation. Psychologist Robert Cialdini has written extensively about the human need to reciprocate – it’s innate and powerful. So if you go first with your generosity, it’s a great strategy for building new relationships.
Also, though, what other option do you have? Unwanted, selfish interruptions aren’t going to do you any favors. Audiences can and will skip and avoid everything they don’t want or like (or LOVE), so you might as well start making things that Blow Their Minds™.
The true magic for Jenny (all great gift-givers), though, is the pure magic created by the right gift.
“I love gifting. I love giving and also witnessing people having joy. I just love that. You can just see it in their faces when you produce the perfect experience.”
What would it look like if you designed your marketing and content as thoughtful, generous Gifts™?
Listening and Research
So where do you start?
If you’re going to Blow Their Minds™, you have to understand their minds first. Your recipients are not you. And so you must watch, listen, and learn to discover what will create true joy and value for the people you seek to impact. The way Jenny approaches researching a Gift™ is the same as designing remarkable content for a specific audience.
“Anyone can give a gift, but I love to find the right gift for that particular person. It’s about understanding who the recipient is - like really, really understanding them. And finding gifts or ideas that aren't obvious. You have to listen, pay attention, and remember details for inspiration. Someone might casually mention something off the cuff, and I put a pin in it. ‘Oh! They like this!’ Sometimes if I hear something interesting about a person, then I'll ask subtle questions to draw it out more. Then I get a fuller picture of who they are.
“Sometimes the gift choice is deliberate - they said something, and then I do research.
“And sometimes, it will just happen to me where I come across something unusual and I do a little bit of digging into it. ‘Oh! This thing - it would be the perfect gift!’”
When you have all your filters and attention tuned to the needs of your recipients, it is much more likely for inspiration to strike and for Minds to be Blown.
Secrets, Surprises, and Reveals
We’ve explored the power of being unexpected, surprising, and violating expectations in past editions with Dan Heath and Jonah Berger. It turns out that these are also brilliant factors to consider in gift-giving.
While Jenny is extremely trustworthy in all other aspects of her life, when it comes to Gifts™ and experiences, she is a Master of Secrets. In a veil of complete mystery, she devilishly plans with extraordinary detail and orchestrates elaborate reveals. The revealing of a secret, unexpected surprise is what Blows Their Minds™, what makes it memorable, and what makes it word-of-mouth worthy.
Here are a few examples of how Jenny does it…
Curated Gift Boxes
A holiday gift box generally = boring and unsurprising assortment of chocolates, cheeses, and crackers. Not with Jenny.
Jenny started an annual tradition at Pacific Content of sending every one of our clients a curated box of gifts. Every year, Jenny would pick a new theme and would then go to work researching and assembling an eclectic and surprising mix of gifts. Each item was hand-picked!
One year, it was all audio-related and included everything from headphones to custom-designed audio and podcasting stickers, to gifts to be used during various podcast listening activities, like a dish scrubbing pad so you could listen to podcasts while washing dishes. Minds blown.
Another year, it was a care package from Canada to our predominantly American clients, and included maple syrup, a sealed can of Canadian air, and a wide assortment of strange and awesome Canadiana. More minds blown.
Every year, our office would turn into an assembly line, with piles of boxes and gifts and cards being put together. One year, the delivery person had to call in backup because there were so many packages going out. And every year, the love and gratitude we got from clients for giving the most surprising and least generic holiday gift box made it all more than worthwhile.
What would your content and marketing look like if you curated it like a phenomenal personalized gift box to bring joy to your audience?
The Retreat
If you ask anyone who worked at Pacific Content prior to the pandemic about their favorite part of working there, the odds are very good that the annual company retreat would be at the top of the list.
Again, it was 100% Jenny. And again, each one involved carefully constructed secrets and surprises, revealed at exactly the right time.
Our team was dispersed geographically and we wanted everyone to get together in person at least once a year. Thus The Retreat was born. Every American Thanksgiving, our clients were off while we Canadians were not, so that’s when we held our Retreats. The reveal of the location was the first surprise. We started in Banff, and went to Palm Springs the next year, Los Angeles the year after that, and New Orleans just before the pandemic. The goal of the Retreat was strengthening relationships, so we did zero work.
Every Retreat was filled with reveals and unexpected surprises, but the LA trip was the one that truly Blew MY Mind. We all flew into town and had ZERO idea of what we were doing for three days. The first morning, Jenny instructed us to meet in a generic hotel conference room. She told us that we were going to start the Retreat by watching a documentary. The room was not exactly thrilled.
Surprise #1. The documentary was a not-yet-released film called Bathtubs Over Broadway, an ode to industrial musicals. Industrial musicals were full-scale Broadway musicals created and performed by iconic stage talents, commissioned by brands for sales meetings or company retreats. They were an early and bold form of branded content and the parallels to our business were eery. (10/10 - go watch this movie.)
Surprise #2. After the documentary was over, we were organized into teams. We were slightly worried we were going to do a hokey corporate team-building activity. Jenny brought our attention to one of the walls of the room we were in. She pulled a handle, revealing the wall to be retractable! She pulled open the wall to reveal a secret room filled with an entire theatrical wardobe department. We were tasked with creating our own Industrial Musicals! Jenny remembers the grand reveal from her point of view: “Everybody was like, what the f$#k is happening? And I'm just loving it.”
It is not an accident that Jenny is brilliant at Gifts™, Retreats, and producing world-class content. They all share the same requirements for research and planning, thoughtful generosity, and unexpected surprises with the goal of bringing joy to others.
The Magic of Giving
We all know this, but it’s easy to forget it when we are in the more selfish mindset of marketing our wares – giving feels great. Giving truly feels best and is most authentic when you give with no expectation of anything in return. Jennys sums up why we should all put more thought and effort into more Gifts™ that Blow Their Minds™:
“It feels SO good to make things that other people love.”
Can anything bad happen for you and your company by generously making things that other people LOVE?
What’s Earned My Attention Recently
The Power of Stories: How stories help us make sense of the world.
Why trust matters from Rishad Tobaccowala.
The new standup specials from Shane Gillis and Nate Bargatze are both hilarious, with completely different styles.
If you’re seeking to create a differentiation strategy for your business and your marketing, have you considered Competitive Differentiation Strategy™?