Another train has left the station.

The 2024 holiday season marked the unveiling of the 18^th collectible ornament designed and sourced by Counselor Top 40 distributor Overture Promotions (asi/288473) for Canadian National (CN) Railway.

The 2024 Canadian National ornament designed by Overture Promotions (asi/288473) features multiple hand-painted trains and a snowy holiday landscape.

Since 2007, CN has commissioned Overture Promotions with the task of designing the annual keepsakes – hand-painted ornaments featuring trains in a Canadian landscape. While the items normally depict just one train, the 2024 iteration features several.

“We wanted to show that the world is open and back together with multiple trains,” says Jenna Herchenbach, senior sales account manager at Overture who’s taken part in the yearly project since 2008.

Each year, Overture is tasked with the following: create an ornament that has a different design from any previous year. Other than that, CN gives the distributor full rein over the process that normally begins every March – the railway has a library of high-resolution photographs that Overture chooses from for the design, taking into account that the flat photo needs to render nicely into a round illustration that can be painted by hand. Overture puts together mock-ups, picks their favorite and puts it into production. They’ve been working so long on these items, says Herchenbach, that CN takes no part in the ideation process.

“They don’t even check the prototypes,” she says. “They just trust us.”

The ornaments are mostly purchased internally by CN team leaders and supervisors to distribute to their employees as holiday gifts. An added plus is the subtle branding for the company.

“For many people, especially in Canada, it’s a family tradition to work for the railways,” says Herchenbach, who values the 2024 campaign at about $24,000. “They’re in it for the long haul, so these yearly ornaments have become true collector’s items. The railway is very family-oriented, and the ornaments are something that can be brought home to family.”

The biggest challenge each year, says Herchenbach, is predicting how many ornaments will sell so they can prebook the order and not have too many left over. This year, Overture ordered 2,000 and had sold 1,950 at the time of this writing. The distributor keeps track of everyone who purchases in a given year and sends reminders ahead of time – those customers all proceed to buy again, she says, and it keeps the conversation open to other promotional items for different needs.

“I’ve learned so much about the railway world by working on this annual campaign – trains pull so much each day,” says Herchenbach. “Plus, they happen to be Christmas-y, so it’s just a really fun project to work on each year.”

Based on 2023 North American promotional products revenue of $122 million, Overture Promotions ranked 23^rd on Counselor’s most recent list of the industry’s largest distributors.

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