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Up Close With... Noel Tatt
Help At Hand Reaching a milestone in life and business is generally worth celebrating, especially if it involves others in a positive way. This is most definitely the case, big time, with Noel Tatt and its relationship with Helpcards. An impressive £1.5 million has now been raised for the 32 charities involved in Help since Noel Tatt started producing the Christmas charity packs in 2001, £100k alone from sales in 2017. PG caught up with Michael Griffiths, Noel Tatt’s sales manager, to take stock on this rewarding success story. Sometimes in our industry we can lose sight of the good work that goes on as a result of greeting cards being published, retailed, bought and sent. A greeting card is a powerful product; a meaningful and tangible communication medium that forges stronger links in personal relationships with the feelgood benefits derived from receiving a card having been scientifically proven several years ago. However, if the cards being bought also have a charitable tie-up then even better, with their purchase not only helping to generate funds for all manner of worthy causes, but also raising awareness of the charity’s brand. And if the basis of the charitable arrangement is at no risk to the charity then all the better. Multiply that 32 times and by 16 Christmases (and counting) and you get Helpcards’ incredibly fruitful relationship with Noel Tatt. An astonishing £1.5 million has Below: Traditional fine art continues to score for Help. Middle: The ‘wild card’ in this year’s selection is this pug design. Right: Religious imagery still features in the line up.
Above: Noel Tatt has developed an FSDU for retailers to display the Help packs. Left: Michael Griffiths (left) with House of Cards’ Nigel Williamson (centre) and Lee Hartley (Noel Tatt) at the recent GCA AGM and Conference.
been shared out between the 32 different charities involved in Help as a result of the sale of specially designed packs of Christmas cards that are sold in Noel Tatt’s 1,500 retail customers’ shops every year. Commenting on reaching the £1.5 million charity donation milestone, Michael Griffiths, sales manager of Noel Tatt, accepts that it is a gratifying triumph. “It is wonderful to think that through our retail customers stocking them, and the consumers buying
them, that our Christmas cards have been able to do so much good, providing much needed funds for a broad reach of charities.” The charity stakeholders that collectively form and own Helpcards, include well-known charity brands (such as Barnardo’s, Macmillan Cancer Support and RNLI), as well as much smaller and less well-known causes, such as Treloar’s (a school for disabled children in Hampshire), The Docklands Settlements (a network of amenity centres in deprived areas of London) and the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (a UK conservation charity that protects rare breeds of farm livestock). Michael has been instrumental in the Helpcards’ relationship with Noel Tatt since both parties started working together back at the start of this century. “We didn’t have a charity side at the time and so together with my colleague, our general manager Ian PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
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