世論 What Japan Thinks

As we run down towards the end of the year, I’ll present a few ranking surveys from goo Ranking into 年賀状, nengajou, New Year postcards. This one looks at how to make your card stand out from all the others.

Demographics

Between the 18th and 20th of October 2011 1,092 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.3% of the sample were male, 11.2% in their teens, 16.2% in their twenties, 25.7% in their thirties, 25.8% in their forties, 11.5% in their fifties, and 9.5% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

A friend (who I hope isn’t reading, or at least doesn’t recognise the description) once did a ray-traced computer graphic, but although he normally is quite talented at that sort of thing, on a New Year greetings card it just looked a bit cheap and nasty. On the other hand, another friend draws very proficient traditional-style Japanese pictures which really do stand out.

Probably a number of you have seen a collection of creative business cards – let me see if I can find a similar site for Japanese New Year cards – the only I came across was this dried squid:

If I was wanting to stand out, I’d make a Flash animation (assuming I had any talent in that direction!) and print out postcards that were nothing more than a stark black-and-white QR Code. One for an SEO company or advertising agency would be just a Google search keyword as seen in advertisements.

My postcards are commercially printed with photos inserted, but this year we got the count wrong and ended up having to do half of them on boring old cards, but I had a kappa stamp that added a bit of individuality to these.

Ranking result

Q: What tricks would make your New Year postcard stand out from all the rest? (Sample size=1,092)

Rank		Score
1	Make my own design using my computer	100
2	Do it all by hand	67.6
3	Use my computer to add a photograph	48.7
4	Use commercial New Year card creation software	36.4
5	Add a hand-written message to a pre-printed card	31.3
6	Use a calligraphy brush	17.4
7	Use stickers	15.5
8	Do a collage, use paper cut-outs, etc	13.4
9	Use a stamp	11.5
10	Use woodblock print, rubber print	11.0
11	Do a picture letter	10.7
12	Do a potato print	7.8
13	Get cards with a photo added printed commercially	7.2
14	Write in invisible ink	5.6
15	Use a stencil	4.5
16=	Use Print Gokko (silk-screen printing kit)	4.0
16=	Do a fukie – blow through a straw at a blob of paint	4.0
18	Add embossing	2.9
19	Use marbling	2.7
20	Do sputtering (airbrushing)	2.1