Stationery is a proxy.

It stands in for you when you’re not there.

Whether it’s your business card or the invitation to the biggest day of your life, your stationery should be undeniably yours. So you that people would recognize it even if your name was nowhere to be found.

It should represent you well.

I think one of the most important things stationery can do to represent you is to be generous.

Because most business and social stationery is self-focused: here’s MY information, call me. Here are the details to MY wedding – show up (gift in-hand).

It’s emblazoned with your logo, your name, your monogram.

That’s the stuff that gets thrown away.

You know what doesn’t get thrown away? A gift.

When you’re generous with your stationery, it becomes less about the transaction and more about the relationship.

Your stationery (being you when you’re not there) can become a gift.

What does that look like?

I was talking to a wedding DJ the other day about his business (and his business cards). We talked about what his clients value. For a lot of “older” millennials (or xennials like me), nostalgia is a high priority.

So I asked him: what if the back of his business card had a URL – not his company website, but something like TheBestDanceEver.com?

And when someone went to that website, they could enter their birth year and get a list of the top ten dance songs from the years they were age 16-20, the years that covered their homecoming and prom. The years they transitioned from a kid in the parents’ house to an adult on their own.

Even better, what if that website created a Spotify playlist of those forty songs for them?

You’re googling the top dance songs of your senior year right now, aren’t you?

Stationery is a proxy

It stands in for you when you’re not there.

What does yours say about you?