PMG Pairs Gifts with Experiences

The Ask‍

PMG’s BIPOC Employee Resource Group (ERG) was considering making a big splash in 2021 for the upcoming Hispanic Heritage Month. This was the group’s first full year in operation and was a safe space for quite a few Hispanic employees. With PMG’s headquarters in Fort Worth and other multiple office locations in Texas, Hispanic Heritage Month was a relevant and important event. 

The parameters for this gift were to make it memorable and create a lasting impression, tie in the gift box with the other touch points planned for HHM for the company, and to ensure that we represented a larger range of Hispanic identities than just Mexico. 

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The Solution

And off we went! We had a BLAST ideating the details for this box and working with the team at PMG, who was so open and responsive to our creative vision. 

The first challenge was to integrate this gift with a virtual empanada-making class. The wider marketing team at the company was hosting a chef to lead any employee who would like to join over Zoom. The overall thought here was that they wanted to have an interactive experience while still paying homage to the culture. Food, family, and togetherness are strong motifs in many BIPOC cultures, especially the Hispanic community. The class was the perfect fit, and we wanted to also translate a sense of cohesion with our gift box. What better way to do that then include gifts that could be used during the cooking class? 

We included an embroidered apron crafted by Otomí artisans. The Otomí are an indigenous group of people native to central Mexico. The next item was a bottle of Extra Virgin Olive Oil from “Taste of Old Country.” This oil originates directly from Spain and has won multiple awards for its excellence. Finally, the last item that followed the cooking theme was an aguayo table runner made by Peruvian and Bolivian indigenous women. This runner would be a perfect addition to dress up the place settings before serving the empanadas. 

With these items, we were also able to fulfill our second challenge of sourcing gifts from a wider net of Hispanic identities than just Mexico. Our gifts were representative of parts of Central and South America, as well as Spain itself to ensure we were supporting everyone. We also continued this thinking for our final two gifts included in the box. The first was an horchata candle poured in a hand painted clay pot by a Venezuelan and Spanish small business based here in the United States. The final gift was a set of Ecuadorian chocolates imported from the country itself. We were so ecstatic to be able to fulfill this wish of finding vendors from multiple different backgrounds. As we communicated with these businesses, we learned about everyone’s founding stories and the love and care that went into creating every single product! It was our honor to share their hard work with a larger group like PMG and celebrate a beautiful occasion. 

But, we’re not done just yet! Our last task at hand was really pulling out all the stops to make this a truly memorable experience. We thought long and hard about how we wanted to design the packaging and put together a list of commonalities between the Hispanic community to identify a common motif. After a long brainstorming session, we decided to frame the outside design of the box and the greeting card included inside around the Pixar movie “Coco.” We drew inspiration from the movie posters and pulled the same colors, mimicked the brush-like strokes and patterns, and incorporated the papel picado designs. From there, we also created a separate postcard that looked like a custom PMG Loteria game card on the front and listed out the details of what was in the box on the back of the card. Loteria is similar to bingo and we found it was an overarching activity that many enjoy! 

That’s a wrap! We truly loved this project because it allowed our team to flex our design skills and create so many lasting new partnerships with Hispanic-owned small businesses. We were able to continue partnering with a few of these brands for future projects! Furthermore, we often use this example as a way for companies to pair a gift with a virtual experience. There’s so many unique ways to go about gifting other than just directly sending a package to someone’s doorstep! Not only do you get some cool gifts out of this deal, but you also get to create a new core work memory to last you! 

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The Final Product