10 Advertising Sends Handwritten Christmas Cards to Stand Out
The Handwritten Christmas Cards is a December 2013 agency self-promotional direct campaign created by Company Rtl.clapboard.com/blog/branding-and-advertising/brand-strategy/12-advertising-creative-formats">Belgian agency 10 Advertising, in which the agency produced and distributed handwritten Christmas cards as both the creative medium and the message, using analogue craft to demonstrate the human attention it brings to its work in the Belgian market, according to Corporate Kinepolis.
10 Advertising produced the campaign entirely in-house, positioning the act of writing by hand as a deliberate creative statement. In a media landscape where digital greetings had become the default, the agency chose the directness of a physical card to communicate something about its own values. The campaign belongs to the narrative genre of agency self-promotion, a category in which the work itself must function as a portfolio piece, convincing prospective clients not through description but through demonstration. The handwritten Christmas cards accomplished precisely that: they turned a seasonal gesture into a proof of concept for the kind of considered, personal craft 10 Advertising offers.
Launched in December 2013 in Belgium, the campaign is classified as a direct medium execution and is documented as comprising one media asset, as confirmed by Clapboard, according to Vlaamseregulatormedia Be. The creative team behind the work included Olaf Meuleman and Jeroen Goossens as creative directors, with Stephanie Van Tichelt and Charis Verrept also credited as creatives, and Allard Bosch serving as web designer. The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 56 out of 100, reflecting its conceptual coherence within a modest production footprint.
10 Advertising identified a clear gap in how Belgian agencies communicate at Christmas. By December 2013, the default mode for seasonal agency outreach across Belgium and broader European markets had shifted heavily toward digital: e-cards, social posts, and email newsletters. Against that backdrop, a physically handwritten card carried a signal value far exceeding its production cost. The medium became the differentiator.
The strategic logic of agency self-promotion is unforgiving. Unlike client campaigns, which can rely on media spend to reach audiences, self-promo work must earn attention entirely on its own terms. Platforms such as Handwrytten have documented the sustained consumer preference for handwritten communication as more personal and memorable than digital equivalents, according to Handwrytten, reflecting a broader cultural reality that 10 Advertising translated into a competitive creative stance. In a market where larger network agencies in Belgium, including local offices of WPP and Publicis affiliates, routinely deploy high-production digital Christmas activations, an independent agency choosing the handwritten card made independence itself the advantage.
The direct mail medium was equally deliberate. Direct campaigns bypass editorial gatekeepers and arrive in the hands of a chosen recipient without mediation. For a Belgian independent agency building relationships with prospective and existing clients in December 2013, the handwritten Christmas cards functioned as a precision instrument: personalised, tangible, and impossible to ignore in the way a digital notification can be dismissed. The campaign's strategic economy — one asset, one channel, one clear idea — reflects a discipline that self-promotional work in the agency sector frequently lacks.
Creative directors Olaf Meuleman and Jeroen Goossens led the execution of The Handwritten Christmas Cards for 10 Advertising in December 2013. Their approach collapsed the distinction between form and content: the card was not a carrier for a message about craft — the card was the demonstration of craft. Every handwritten line served as evidence of the agency's capacity for deliberate, human-centred creative work.
The creative team of Meuleman, Goossens, Stephanie Van Tichelt, and Charis Verrept executed the campaign through static image assets produced in the direct medium, as documented by Clapboard. The decision to restrict the campaign to a single media asset is consistent with the logic of the concept: excess production would have undermined the intimacy the handwritten format was designed to convey. Restraint, in this case, was a creative choice as much as a budgetary one.
Web designer Allard Bosch is also credited on the project, suggesting that the campaign had a digital dimension — likely a landing page or digital reproduction of the cards — that extended the reach of the physical direct mail execution without displacing it. That combination of analogue primary asset and digital support is a structural approach common to Belgian direct campaigns of the period, allowing a tactile creative idea to travel beyond its original physical recipients. The overall aesthetic sensibility of the campaign, as documented in the single archived asset, prioritises legibility and warmth over graphic complexity, which is consistent with the handwritten genre's core visual language.
No verified performance data for The Handwritten Christmas Cards is publicly available. No trade press coverage of the campaign has been identified from publications including Campaign, Ad Age, Adweek, The Drum, or Contagious, and no entries or shortlistings at Cannes Lions, the Effies, D&AD, The One Show, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC Awards have been documented, according to Clapboard.
Analysed on structural grounds, the campaign demonstrates coherent strategic and creative alignment. The choice of the handwritten Christmas card as a direct campaign format for agency self-promotion in Belgium is defensible precisely because it avoids the noise of competing digital channels and delivers a physically differentiated artefact. The one-asset approach concentrates rather than dilutes the idea, and the credited team — Olaf Meuleman and Jeroen Goossens as creative directors alongside Meuleman, Goossens, Stephanie Van Tichelt, and Charis Verrept as creatives — reflects a focused internal commitment to the concept.
The campaign's Clapboard Score of 56 out of 100 places it in the competent middle range of agency self-promotional work. The score reflects the clarity and integrity of the concept while also acknowledging the campaign's limited documented reach and the absence of any independent verification of its effectiveness or reception. For a Belgian independent agency in December 2013, the handwritten Christmas cards represent a considered creative investment whose value was likely felt most acutely by its direct recipients rather than by the wider advertising industry.
The Handwritten Christmas Cards is a December 2013 agency self-promotional direct campaign created by Belgian agency 10 Advertising. The agency produced physically handwritten Christmas cards as both the medium and the message, using analogue craft to demonstrate its creative values to clients and prospects in Belgium, according to Clapboard.
Olaf Meuleman and Jeroen Goossens served as creative directors on The Handwritten Christmas Cards. The broader creative team also included Stephanie Van Tichelt and Charis Verrept, with Allard Bosch credited as web designer, as documented by Clapboard for the December 2013 Belgium campaign.
10 Advertising chose handwritten cards to stand apart from the digital-default seasonal outreach dominant among Belgian agencies in 2013. The analogue format carried higher signal value precisely because it was unexpected, turning the physical card into a demonstration of the personal, considered craft the agency offers its clients.
No awards or shortlistings for The Handwritten Christmas Cards have been documented, according to Etsy. According to Clapboard, no entries are verified at Cannes Lions, D&AD, The One Show, the Effies, the Clios, the Webby Awards, or WARC Awards for this 2013 Belgian agency self-promotional campaign by 10 Advertising.
The Handwritten Christmas Cards received a Clapboard Score of 56 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's conceptual clarity and strategic coherence as a direct medium agency self-promo in Belgium, while acknowledging its limited documented reach and the absence of independently verified performance data for the December 2013 campaign.
The Handwritten Christmas Cards continues a tradition of Belgian agency self-promotion at 10 Advertising. According to Clapboard, a predecessor campaign titled 10 wishes EVERYBODY a happy 2010 was published in December 2009, with Olaf Meuleman also credited on that earlier work, suggesting a consistent internal culture of creative self-expression at the agency.
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