What’s the best business gift you’ve ever given or received? We put this question to some top marketing professionals. These are a few of their favorite things.

Damn the desk clocks

No contest, says Philippe Garneau, a partner with Toronto-based agency Garneau Wurstlin Philp – the best business gift he ever received was a Swiss Army knife, back in the late 1980s.

Not that there hasn’t been a lot to choose from. Over the years, Garneau has received everything from a director’s chair, to umbrellas, to wine. But it’s the knife that stays with him, he says. It regularly fixes the screws on his reading glasses, and opens bottles of wine.

‘Be damned all the day-timers and desk clocks and filing devices,’ he says. ‘This is something I could really use and enjoy.’

Absolutely fabulous

‘People send fabulous things,’ says Sunni Boot, executive vice-president and executive director of Toronto-based Optimedia.

Gift baskets roll in by the carload at Christmas, she says – and many are downright lavish. (‘People really think about what goes into them.’) So abundant have they become, in fact, that the media buying agency will hold draws for them during the holiday season, with the proceeds going to charity.

One particularly memorable holiday gift was a thick terry-cloth bathrobe that Boot says she still uses. There’s also a company out west that sends holly to the agency every year. But according to Boot, the best item that she and her colleagues ever received was a working toolbox – last year’s holiday gift from multicultural broadcaster cfmt.

Make ’em laugh

In keeping with the spirit of the agency, Toronto’s Roche Macaulay & Partners likes to shake up the gift-giving concept at holiday time, by providing clients with a few laughs.

Three years ago, for example, the agency gave terry-cloth bathrobes to all the senior people on its client roster. The Roche Macaulay logo and the words ‘We’d like you to think of us when you’re naked’ were stitched inside.

‘It was just an attempt at being memorable,’ says Andy Macaulay, the agency’s senior vice-president, director of strategic planning.

Last year, Roche Macaulay sent out personal message recorders that featured a ‘personalized’ holiday greeting from Geoffrey Roche, the agency’s president and creative director. At least, that’s what was promised. The joke was that Roche’s pre-recorded message was, in fact, strictly generic. The personalized portions, such as the client’s name, were filled in by another voice.

By the book

David Eisenstadt, president of The Communications Group in Toronto, started something of a tradition for his public relations firm 10 years ago, when he discovered a series of hardcover coffee-table books by Time-Life photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. Although the spelling of the photographer’s surname differed slightly from his own, Eisenstadt thought the attractive books would make good mementos, and decided to send one every year to his key client contacts. (To keep them from getting lost in the endless parade of gifts at holiday time, the firm sent the books out in February rather than December.)

There’s just one problem: The series ran out a couple of years ago, leaving Eisenstadt with the task of finding something else equally memorable. ‘If there was an endless supply of books, we could have done it forever,’ he says.

Much, much more music

Not surprisingly, MuchMusic tends to give out a lot of music cds. And there’s quite an array of possibilities, says David Kirkwood, vice-president, sales and marketing for MuchMusic, as well as its sister stations Bravo!, MuchMoreMusic and Space: The Imagination Station.

Much, for example, has its pop compilations Big Shiny Tunes and Much Dance, and Bravo! has a jazz compilation. But it’s Space that has the most intriguing offering. Spaced Out! is a compilation that features Star Trekkers Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner performing such classic tunes as ‘If I Had a Hammer’ and ‘Mr. Tambourine Man,’ along with a few originals (notably ‘Spock Thoughts’ and ‘Music To Watch Space Girls By’).

You’ve moved where?

What better way to tie in a company relocation with holiday good wishes than to send out a gift that reveals the location of the new space?

That’s what ‘invertising’ agency audience did last year, says President Marty Teplitsky, when it moved its offices to the space above Toronto’s Amsterdam Brewing Company. Soon afterward, clients, friends and suppliers received a six-pack of the brewery’s special Kerstmis Beer, with a customized audience label.

Mo’ better booze

Officially, Harry Rosen doesn’t give out gifts during the holidays. But Larry Rosen, president of the Toronto-based men’s clothier, has been known to buy gifts personally for certain colleagues. And, nine times out of 10, he’ll head to specialty wine store Vintages to find what he’s looking for.

A $100 bottle of wine, Rosen says, is the sort of special item that people will rarely buy for themselves. Yet there’s nothing better than receiving such a gift – and he enjoys being the benefactor.

And goodwill toward…

Jane Langdon, president of public relations firm Langdon Starr Ketchum, says that she struggles every year to come up with imaginative and appropriate holiday gifts, and usually relies on consumables.

Lately, however, the company has cut down slightly on its gift-giving, choosing to contribute to worthy causes instead. This year, for example, the firm will support the Second Harvest food bank.

‘You’re trying to reflect the spirit of the season,’ she says.

Also in this special report:

Ÿ Clean and sober the trend in gifts: Booze and smokes are out as business gifts; food and modest mementos are in p.27

Ÿ Some suggestions for holiday giving p.30