The archive · Design & Visual · Marketing decision · 2023
The Chase's 2023 First Class Christmas Card folds a postcard into a card
The Chase London mailed clients a postcard that folds into a Christmas card, its three Kings stamps making up first-class post — wit built into the mail.
The Chase
What it had to solve
The Chase's London studio wanted its Christmas card to remind clients that it is about witty design, 'a smile in the mind'. The card had to make that point through the object itself as it travelled first class through the post in 2023.
How it works
A Christmas card from a design studio has one job beyond seasonal goodwill: to remind clients what the studio is good at. The Chase London's 2023 card made that case with the object itself — a postcard that folds into a Christmas card, sent purely to say the studio is about witty design, 'a smile in the mind'.
The wit was engineered into the mail. The card's three 3 Kings stamps make up first-class post in 2023, so the stamps do real postal work while carrying the Christmas joke; the folding paper turns a flat postcard into a card that stands up.
Nothing in the mailer had to explain the studio's proposition: handling the stamps and the fold was the demonstration. D&AD preserved the card in its awards archive, which records no response figures, so the case rests on the idea — self-promotion whose medium is the message.
Why it lands
- The joke is in the mechanics: the recipient must fold the paper and read the stamps, so getting the joke is the experience of the brand.
- It demonstrates the studio's claim rather than asserting it — a card about witty design that is itself witty in construction.
- First-class postage made the piece a small feat of design: the card's own stamps had to add up, tying the idea to a real postal constraint.
- A self-promotion with no product to sell still had a deliverable: a physical object clients could keep, showing the studio's craft in miniature.
What it did
The mailer demonstrated the studio's pitch in its own medium: the wit is carried by paper and postage rather than explained in words, and D&AD preserved the card in its awards archive, which records no response figures.
What you can take
For a studio that sells wit, the self-promotion should be the product: build the joke into the object's construction so that receiving and handling the mail is the experience.
Since then
The card was sent to The Chase's clients at Christmas 2023 and is preserved in D&AD's awards archive, which records no response figures. Its lesson outlives the season: when the product is wit, the client gift should itself be a working demonstration of the wit.
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