The future of gifts is personalisation
It was the 40th birthday of a friend of mine recently and I was rather at a loss as to what to get them. I’ve known him for 20 years so I started thinking about our time in the eighties when we did some travelling together and spent weekends partying. The (often rather poor) music we listened to at the time came back to me, so I started compiling a playlist in iTunes with the idea of burning a CD. It then occurred to me that I could probably give the playlist as a gift, and yes you can:
The gift went down well, and I had great fun compiling it. With the ease with which we can manipulate digital content, combined with cheap printing, having personalised gifts seems an easy step to make now. A few companies have started doing this, but I think it’ll become the norm over the next few years. Simply getting someone a book or CD will seem something of an insult, because the most valuable thing you can give someone is the time and effort you put into a gift. Personalised board games, videos, books – that’s what I want for Christmas (and maybe an iPhone too).
