The cure for boredom

Is it just us or has anyone else noticed that agency folk seem to be growing elf ears?

It’s the only plausible reason we can think of to explain all the helpful e-gifts that have landed in our inbox this month. This one from Pound & Grain, in particular, has us reaching to sign a “thank you” card to the agency for sharing ways to help us face the quieter-than-usual holiday break.

The agency’s Fight The Boredom website is a smorgasbord of things that each member of the Pound & Grain team personally contributed to help fight Christmas cabin fever: their favourite card games (with instructions, no less), their best pandemic-inspired recipes (who knew you could make bread with a potato?), binge-worthy shows (say goodbye to the Netflix scroll), rabbit-hole-worthy IG accounts, and much more.

As a physical accompaniment to the site, the shop also created a P&G-branded deck of cards that are being sent to its clients and friends.

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Kindness is contagious

Canadians carried the “care-mongering” movement well this year. We saw acts of kindness run rampant through the country’s neighbourhoods during the pandemic. Perhaps it was our contagious kindness that inspired this holiday film from Klick Health.

“When Nobody’s Watching” shows a frontline physician selflessly helping everyone around her. In return, she receives an unexpected shiny gift from a couple of neighbourhood kids.

In just a week, the animated spot has drawn over one million eyeballs. That number far surpasses the max donation amount that Klick promised to donate to non-profit Sesame Workshop, with the shop promising to give $1 for every view, up to a total of $10,000.

Klick worked with top animation studio Psyop, as well as with composers and sound designers at Antfood, both of which are based out of New York, to create the film.

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Deck the calls

All WFH employees want for Christmas are mugs, masks and Zoom backgrounds (how did we get here?).

Jan Kelley is giving us the gift of location anonymity via its holiday card, a website that houses festive video call backgrounds. The site also shares design templates for other office paraphernalia, like the staple coffee mug, and holiday-inspired masks for the worker of the social distance era, as well as a “Work from Ho Ho Home Playlist” to keep you in a festive mood all December long.

And finally, to really make the thought count, a donation to the YWCA of Hamilton, Burlington and Brantford (regions where the agency is located) has been made in Jan Kelley’s name.