Partner Article

Virtual advent calendar takes Teesside to Texas

A North East-based agency has started a trend with an environmentally friendly advent calendar. Marketing communications agency Calm Asylum originally designed the calendar to help the company reduce its carbon footprint.

The virtual advent calendar is now in its third year and creators at Calm have taken a steady stream of orders from firms wanting their own version. Through word of mouth over the internet, the calendar has reached people as far away as Texas. The idea has been a hit for both its commercial and environmental benefits saving on postage and paper.

Mark Easby, operations director of Calm, said: “We love Christmas and we wanted to give our clients something fun to do every day in the run up to the break. We also wanted an alternative to paper corporate Christmas cards which we feel are boring, do very little to build your brand and take up huge paper resources and valuable time.”

The calendar is accessible via Calm Asylum’s website where you can open the different days to play games, watch a video or answer quiz questions. Like a traditional advent calendar you cannot open all the windows at once, but a new one is available every morning.

1,500 people were sent the launch e-mail on December 1 in 2005. Better tracking enabled Calm to monitor viral activity through a ‘send to a friend’ function.

One client from Stockton got in touch after receiving the link via a friend in local government in Birmingham, who in turn had been sent it by a friend in local government in Glasgow, who’d been sent it by a friend in a commercial company based in Houston, Texas.

Calm believes more ideas like this will increase its ability to reduce the carbon footprint and create similar opportunities for its customers.

For more information about Calm Asylum, visit www.calmasylum.com.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .