Seven years ago we decided to ditch the annual mission of creating the company Christmas card and go for something more sustainable, the obvious choice being a themed calendar which would stay on people’s desks for 12 months.

This proved to be very successful and it’s been encouraging to visit customer’s offices and see our brand dotted across the open plan landscapes. We’ve been coming up with a unique version every year since then.

We’d been wondering whether the genre was now a bit tired and the not inconsiderable strain on effort and budget too much, and therefore whether we should be doing something different (or nothing at all).

I thought I’d do a bit of research and phoned a few people. The feedback was overwhelming, for example “I look forward to the calendar arriving in the post, it’s the one I always use – any others go straight in the bin”.

To add to the endorsements, last week I had an unsolicited comment from a long standing client who's office is in Hemel Hempstead. He had been at our offices in Henley for a meeting and as he was leaving our reception, spotted the Signals' calendar and asked if we had any spares. I was naturally horrified that he didn’t already have one as it is now 10 months since we sent them out. His reply was that the one we’d sent him was lost in the deluge following the explosion at the Buncefield oil depot last December and he’d never got around to asking for a replacement. He said it was a great item and he still wanted one even though the year was approaching its end.

This sort of made up my mind that we need to continue the tradition.

Any suggestions for this year’s theme on a postcard . . . . (or email!)