The Unwrapit Formula for More Sustainable Corporate Gifting

Unwrapit has been on a mission for several years to help companies approach corporate gifting differently. In place of branded water bottles, hoodies, and backpacks, we’ve curated a compelling collection of experiential, digital, and charitable gifts instead. From day one, we’ve always given recipients a choice of gifts, recognizing that offering a curated choice of gifts is a powerful way of demonstrating thoughtfulness. 

Our deeply held commitment to shifting corporate and event gifting away from conventional physical gifts has revealed to us both the opportunity and the limitations of pioneering a vision of corporate gifting that excludes physical gifts. The opportunity remains massive in terms of reduced landfill, reduced emissions, and increased charitable donations as gifts. The limitation is that at some human level, some of those responsible for giving corporate gifts and some of those receiving corporate recipients have an innate and understandable draw to the physicality of physical gifts.

We've decided that we want to be able to give those companies that “want to stick with physical gifts” a way of doing that while still giving the recipients of those companies a choice of experiential, digital, or charitable gifts as well. 

We don’t know of any other corporate gifting company that has attempted to push the same gifts “don’t have to be physical” boulder up the hill as we’ve been pushing. This journey has made us wiser and more creative in our thinking. 

We are thrilled to officially share what we think will serve as an enduring and winning formula for effective & more sustainable corporate gifting. The formula we’ve outlined below carries forward our unwavering belief that some of the best corporate gifts are felt and not held and also leaves room for physical gifts. 

As we take steps to introduce physical gifts to our collection that fit in one of the subcategories of more sustainable physical gifts outlined below, we see ourselves maturing as a company and ultimately having the impact we want to have at a far larger scale than if we turned a blind eye to what the market and human nature has been telling us. 

The Unwrapit formula for more sustainable corporate gifting is hard won. We don’t think it could have emerged from a different journey. We’re proud to offer it and look forward to helping companies and events integrate this formula across their gifting programs.

In the same way that more people eating less meat is far more better for the planet than a small number of people eating only plants, we see the opportunity to have a far greater impact by enabling choice while working with and not against human nature. 

Over the coming weeks, we’ll go into more detail on each of the four categories. In the meantime, we offer this formula and welcome your feedback. 

The formula draws some inspiration from the "Something Old, Something New; Something Borrowed, and Something Blue" tradition of wedding gifts updated for the sustainable future we all want for corporate and event gifting.

‍Approach 1: Offer multiple gift campaigns to the same group of recipients that cycle through each of the four pillars, offering a selection of gifts within each sub-category of that pillar.

‍Approach 2: In a single gift campaign, curate a set of gift options that draws from each of the four pillars, ideally with a mix of the sub-categories.