Thinking of You Week 26 Sept – 2 Oct 2016

Spreading Happiness By Sending Cards

Now in its third year, Thinking of You Week (26 Sept – 2 Oct) inspires people to create a wave of love, caring and happiness by sending a card to a different person each day during this special week.

Thinking of You Week has grown by leaps and bounds! This event brings the whole nation together for a special week of card-sending initiatives and events. We now have the support of major retailers, department stores, independents, Royal Mail (we have a special postmark which will be printed on every item of stamped post sent during the week!) and top consumer crafting titles Crafts Beautiful and PaperCrafter magazines – yes we’re aiming for the stars this year!

We’re keen for as many people and organisations to take part, planning lovely card sending events up and down the country.

This page contains ideas and inspiration for initiatives and our new free Thinking of You Week toolkit to help everyone to plan their events.

The Thinking of You Week Toolkit below contains a beautiful new banner, flyer and event poster, new retailer and consumer handouts, as well as social media cover images and email sign offs. We’ve also updated our list of local press contacts, and will be adding a new template press release soon to help you publicise your Thinking of You Week initiative that we’re very keen for you to organise!

Prizes
We’re again giving prizes for the best Thinking of You Week initiatives, displays and events! It’s completely up to you what you do and we have lots of ideas below to help get your creative juices flowing. We’re building on a great body of work from both publishers and retailers – the more of us who take part, the bigger the wave of happiness will be!

Ideas and Inspiration
Use these great ideas as they are or as inspiration to create something completely different and new!

Ideas For Retailers:
Make a Thinking of You Week card display instore, using the branding and pulling together your best selling blank and everyday occasions cards such as friendship, get well, thank you and of course thinking of you!
Use our lovely Thinking of You Week branding and your most colourful cards to create a window display.
Organise a card designing competition with your local school, make a window display of the competition entries during the week, print the winning designs as a prize – see what 2015 prizewinners Asda, Jarrold and Earlybird did here.
Collaborate with a local coffee shop on a card-writing event, if you have your own coffee shop instore – even better!
Create a special card-writing bower, or table where customers can write their cards.
Use the template Thinking of You Week event poster to flag up your event.
Flag up Thinking of You Week on your website’s home page.
Use the list of local press contacts we’ve provided to get the press involved to help spread the word.
Get social – post and tweet like crazy in the lead up to and during the week!

Ideas For Publishers
Create a Thinking of You Week display on your trade fair stand at Harrogate Home and Gift, Autumn Fair or Top Drawer. The ToYW banner is free for you to use!
Collaborate with a retailer on a special offer or Thinking of You Week card display.
Organise a card-sending event with a school, local home for the elderly, charity, hospital or community centre.
Give cards and an allocated time to your staff to write during the week.
Flag up Thinking of You Week on your website home page and in your catalogue updates.
Get social – post and tweet like crazy in the lead up and during the week!

Amazing Initiatives From Previous Years
If all that’s not enough to get your creative juices flowing, here’s all the coverage of the great initiatives from the last couple of years:
Thinking of You Week Prize Winners and Initiatives 2015
Thinking of You Week Prize Winners 2014

Lynn Tait talks about her prize-winning Thinking of You Week initiative in 2014 which brought together elderly people and children from local primary schools.
Lynn’s Lines p1
Lynn’s Lines p2

Thinking of You Week Toolkit

Using the Toolkit

Create your event and use the poster to help publicise.

Use the template press release and press contacts list to publicise your event and business to local newspapers and magazines.

List of local Press Contacts

During the week share your stories about your event and the cards you send via Facebook and Twitter. Remember to tag us! @GCAUK #ThinkingOfYouWeek #SendingCards

Flyers, Banners and Posters

Thinking of You Week Flyer A4 pdf
Thinking of You Week Flyer A4 jpeg

Thinking of You Week Retailer Flyer A4 pdf

Thinking of You Week Banner Logo jpeg
We also have a larger banner if needed, contact Sharon Little at hello@gca.cards

Thinking of You Week Event Poster A1 jpeg (14mb)
(The poster can be sized down if you would like smaller formats)

Thinking of You Week Consumer Handout A5 jpeg
Thinking of You Week Consumer Handout A5 pdf

Layered Artwork Files
If you would like to get creative with the ToYW imagery we also have layered artwork psd files and fonts that we can send you from the office.
Please be aware that the fonts are under license, so can only be used on Thinking of You Week materials.

Just pop an email over to Sharon Little