Over the past month, Amy and I have received two postcards from a company offering to professionally decorate the outside of our home. The mailers were of high quality and showed a full color picture on the front of a finished project – presumably the home was ideally and most tastefully decorated. The back of the card had an invitation to check out their special offer at my very own personalized area of their website; the URL even had my name in it.
The postcards have left me with a range of thoughts…
– They’re trying to make me feel bad about our holiday decorations! What’s wrong with our decorations? Are there too many? Not enough? Are they tacky? What’s the rule of thumb for spreading holiday cheer? Oh wait, we don’t really decorate the outside of our house, there are just two wreaths on the front door.
– I wonder what they would recommend for us? Our house doesn’t look anything like the McMansion on the front of the postcard, but maybe they would still do the widely spaced white lights following the roofline and other architectural features – it looks kinda classy.
– Don’t visit the customized webpage – showing any sort of interest will unleash the marketing hounds! My guess is that they don’t have a picture of our house or any recommendations on there, but you never know.
– Wow, that’s a focused business model! I wonder what these people do for the other 11 months of the year? How many people are there out there that are willing to pay for professional help to decorate their home, especially now? My take is that Americans are less inclined to worry about “keeping up with the Joneses” now that “saving” and “thrift” are popular. But the company sending the card appears to be a large organization if they can afford to send two mailers to me, and they have the technological infrastructure to create a personalized landing page on their website. So there must be a market for their services.
I think that decorating for the holidays should reflect each homeowner’s personal flair. I’m sure there is a place for a professional service, but my sense is that most people are content to handle the chore themselves. Over the next couple weeks we’ll look for interesting and inspired holiday displays and try to post some pictures of our favorites. Feel free to write in with tips if there is something that you particularly enjoy!