"Dear Forkliftaction, since it's not every day that a forklift dealer wins an award for creative excellence, I am hoping you'll consider sharing this story about our children's book, If Santa Had a Lift Truck, which recently took out three ADDY Awards!" Donna Waldrep, director of Marketing at Carolina Handling, shares the story behind the B2B project.

Our story depicts Santa using a range of our warehouse solutions on Christmas Eve while preparing and executing his toy delivery. We see Santa operating forklifts, order pickers, floor scrubbers and more. There’s even a service tech on hand to keep Santa’s sleigh running like new! 

We hope you enjoy it!

The idea for the book came from an internal meeting where our sales team shared with us that many of our customers think of us only as a forklift provider. The industry has evolved to include wider warehouse equipment and there are so many capabilities that customers don’t know about.  

We wanted to send something to our customers that would stand out. So often, B2B companies send a card, gift card, fruit, calendar, etc. Storytelling takes what can be a boring story and brings it to life. It’s different and memorable. 

While we communicate our full capabilities in other ways, this was a more fun, light-hearted way for us to reinforce that message.

The reaction to the book has been great! We’ve had positive feedback from various customers, which has included words like ‘creative’, ‘fun’, ‘different’ and ‘engaging’. 

I even received an email from one of our partners reporting that a colleague had taken to reading the book out loud to his co-workers. “Yes, just like in kindergarten where he reads and then turns the book to the class to show the pictures,” they said.

Do you have an example of when a creative approach has paid off in your company? The Forklift Diaries would love to hear about it!