THAT CHRISTMAS LOOT,: Santa Bring More Headaches Than Cheer

THAR CHRISTMAS LOOT

HARDLY anyone anywhere celebrates Christmas more impressively—or does retailers more good—than the U.S. businessman. He empties a sackful of gifts on expectant customers, fellow executives, public officials, newspaper editors and anyone else who creeps onto his list. The list has grown so long that today the Santas-in-pin-stripes spend something like $1 billion on yuletide cheer: $300 million for liquor, the rest for a stockingful of loot ranging from $2.50 puddings to $2,500 pianos. The giving is not necessarily due to an excess of Christmas spirit; businessmen simply think that they must. As Denver Radio Station Owner Gene Amole says: “Giving business Christmas presents is like drinking at lunch. Nobody wants to, but everyone’s scared not to.” Now at last, the tide is turning. The company Christmas present, like the office party, is on its way down. –

For Christmas this year, Lockheed and most other planemakers, Continental Oil Co.. Diamond Alkali are mailing letters wishing one and all a very merry holiday, but please do not send any gifts to our employees. Boeing Airplane, U.S. Steel, California Packing, Cutter Laboratories, Morri-son-Knudsen Co. and Dresser Inc. have similar policies, though they do not send out a formal letter. Former General Motors President Harlow H. Curtice did not go that far in laying down a rule of thumb to guide his people but he did send around a memo that no G.M. man should accept a gift he cannot eat, drink or smoke in one day. G.M. and many others still send gifts to valued customers and contacts, but they try to make the gifts useful, or at least personal—not the welter of ashtrays, cigarette lighters, wallets, swizzle sticks, canapes, pocket knives and glassware that usually piles up in the executive closet at Christmas time. Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing will send out samples of its Scotch tape products, while Seattle’s Simpson Timber Co. will content itself—and many a housewife—with a box of Christmas wreaths and greens. Dozens of others will cut it out altogether. The Bank of America is just sending cards—after all, the thought is what counts. Some, like Magnolia Petroleum Co.. will pass even that token.

Companies have found that the present produces some king-sized headaches. For every man who says, as does a Cleveland button salesman, “The goose is my best friend,” a dozen others think Christmas-in-the-office is for the birds. The game of Christmas

Giftmanship involves so many that some companies spend $100,000 or more on gifts alone each Christmas. Expense is the least of it. How does a donor ever decide who gets what? Dallas’ Temco Aircraft learned that the “who” had to include just about everyone. It stopped giving altogether because it might spend weeks working on a list, then forgot one important customer who was so offended that all the good work was undone.

The “what” is even tougher to decide. A Chicago building supply firm recently gave a photographer a fine briefcase though he had only done a few brochures for them. Technically, he was head of his own company. A second man, who bought $2,500,000 worth of products, got the nuts—2 Ibs. of pistachios. Technically, he was a minor contact. When the wives of the two men met at a party and compared loot, the sparks started flying. Liquor is supposed to be the all-purpose gift, —unless it happens to go to a teetotaler who has no use for drinkers. Food is pretty good—it gets the wives on the company’s side. But Chicago’s Wilding Picture Productions learned to stop sending baskets of fruit; most of its clients were wintering in Florida, returned home to find a basket of rotting fruit on the back porch.

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There are times when Santa simply cannot win. “Last year,” says the San Francisco public relations man for a major U.S. airline, “we sent turkeys to city editors and managing editors in our area, and a couple of bottles of choice wine to other men on the newspapers. So one of these guys that got wine told me: ‘O.K., so I’m on the B list,’ and then proceeded to chop our name out of every story he handled—except crashes, of course.” Some companies simply pass out catalogues for the customers to check off, or send $100 gift certificates. In not a few cases they discover later that the recipient does not do enough business to produce $100 profit in a year’s time; in others the certificate comes bouncing back with a stern lecture on the evils of bribing.

A few companies are trying a new kind of present; they donate to charity in the name of friends and customers. A lot more will stop trying to get the jump on the competition and give Christmas back where it belongs —to the kiddies. Says Glidden Co. President Dwight P. Joyce: “All this giving doesn’t accomplish a thing. The customer is no longer impressed by gifts. The only thing that does impress him is product and price.”