The Digital Transformation of Corporate & Event Gifting

Canadiansme Small Business Magazine Canada

In this exclusive interview with CanadianSME Small Business Magazine, Peter Deitz, the visionary founder of Unwrapit, discusses how his platform is redefining corporate gifting by prioritizing sustainability and personal connection. Peter, who has co-founded multiple successful social purpose businesses, explains how Unwrapit allows companies to create meaningful gifting experiences while reducing waste and aligning with environmental values. As small and medium-sized businesses increasingly seek ways to integrate social responsibility into their operations, Peter’s insights on digital gifting offer a forward-thinking solution for enhancing brand perception, employee engagement, and client relationships. With Unwrapit, businesses are not only giving gifts—they’re making a statement about their values and commitment to a better future.

Peter Deitz is a 2 x B Corp entrepreneur committed to creating enduring companies that have a deeply-rooted social and environmental purpose. Over the past 15 years, he has co-founded two successful social purpose businesses, Unwrapit and Grantbook.

Unwrapit is a digital platform that builds business relationships through hassle-free and personalized gift campaigns. With Unwrapit, recipients choose their own gift — making it the perfect way to show appreciation to those who matter most to the business. Prior to Unwrapit, Peter co-founded Grantbook, a 50-person philanthropic advisory and digital transformation firm that works with leading foundations and grantmakers.  In January 2025, Grantbook became the first company in Canada to implement an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT). 

Peter is active on LinkedIn and regularly posts about sustainable business, relationship-building, and meaningful corporate philanthropy. 


Unwrapit is transforming the traditional corporate gifting experience with a focus on sustainability and digital innovation. What inspired the creation of Unwrapit, and how does your platform address the evolving needs of modern businesses?

At Unwrapit, we recognized a growing need among businesses to align their gifting practices with their values, particularly in terms of environmental responsibility. One of Unwrapit’s strengths is in elevating the experience of receiving a gift that isn’t physical and can’t end up in landfill. Over the years, we have specialized in helping companies give recipients gifts that fit in this category: namely experiences, digital apps and subscriptions, charitable donations, and practical gift cards. The result is a gifting experience that produces less waste and less carbon emissions compared to a more conventional approach. 

Prior to starting on this journey, I spent a full year brainstorming ideas for my next business. At the end of the year, I had a list of 120 unique ideas. Digital gifting found its way to the top of my list. In digital gifting, I saw the potential for reducing waste. And I saw the potential for technology to strengthen human connection. The two combined captured my imagination.


Many small and medium-sized businesses are seeking ways to align their operations with environmental and social values. How does Unwrapit help companies make more sustainable and meaningful choices when it comes to client and employee gifting?

Humans are hard-wired to value choice and agency. By giving recipients a choice of gifts of no and low waste gifts, recipients get to pick out the gift they prefer. The choice makes the experience more meaningful. So many corporate gifts end up in landfill simply because the recipients don’t want the gift they were given. Snce most of the gifts available through Unwrapit are no or low waste, the recipients are making a sustainable choice regardless of what they choose. 

Giving recipients of charitable donation gifts has the effect of converting a portion of a company’s gifting budget into meaningful corporate philanthropy. When recipients choose a donation gift, they are connecting with the company at the level of shared values and a shared concern for the environment. That’s both memorable and meaningful. 

Despite all this, we’ve found that sustainability is not the #1 priority for most busy executives and their assistants. Our approach, however, does fit into an overall theme of reducing corporate waste. Reducing waste touches on multiple priorities to the business including reducing wasted money, effort, opportunities, and physical waste (“brandfill”).


Can you share a success story where Unwrapit’s approach to gifting made a measurable impact for a client, either in terms of engagement, brand perception, or sustainability goals?

We’ve assembled an extensive collection of case studies on our website. One campaign that stands out is our work with Raptive, an ad tech platform based in the United States. They have a network of thousands of independent creators spread across the world. As a company, they value relationship-building through gifting. Prior to discovering Unwrapit, they had attempted to send a physical gift to each and every creator in their global network. This proved logistically difficult and meant that they were spending as much (if not more) on shipping than on the actual gift. 

For two years in a row, we have managed their holiday gifting program. The campaigns we have produced for them have reached thousands of recipients in countries all over the world. Recipients have had a choice of gift, including trees planted and donation gift options. In both years, the campaign has produced negative emissions overall because a certain number of recipients have chosen to plant trees as their preferred gift. 

Using Unwrapit, Raptive has strengthened important business relationships through gifting while producing negative emissions. That’s pretty amazing! Thanks to Unwrapit’s model, this kind of result is the norm and not the exception. 


As the gifting landscape continues to evolve, what trends or challenges do you foresee for SMBs in the next few years, and how is Unwrapit preparing to meet those changes?

Digital gifting is valuable to companies because it is less susceptible to supply change disruptions, cross-border tariffs, and other highly disruptive events. In those moments of distress and uncertainty, companies will want and need to be able to appreciate their team and connect with their clients. Digital gifting has proven itself as a resilient approach for relationship building in uncertain times.

Another fascinating topic is where AI and gifting intersect. The joy and delight of receiving a thoughtful gift is entirely human. What corporate gifting has chosen us is that the sender does not have to be a human to be meaningful. And so there is the possibility that in the future companies will have to equip their AI models and agents with the ability to send meaningful gifts to their human colleagues. I’m looking forward to working on our first campaign where the sender is an AI agent and the recipients are human. 


Finally, what advice would you offer to small and medium-sized business leaders who want to create memorable, values-driven experiences for their clients and teams?

The future of gifting and the future of work are closely intertwined. As companies formalize hybrid work arrangements and maintain a core number of fully remote team members, the approaches they take to appreciation and recognition will need to change. A digital first approach to gifting makes sense for companies that have taken a digital first approach to other aspects of their business. We see this everyday in the gift campaigns we have the privilege of producing for our corporate customers. 

My final piece of advice is to not underestimate the power of appreciation. Genuine appreciation is one of the most affordable tools available to companies that want to invest in relationships and grow their business. Your customers and employees will know it when they see it. Since so many of us crave more connection and more belonging in our lives, genuine appreciation will likely resonate with the people who are most important to your business. The strengthened relationships that appreciation produces can then directly contribute to helping you achieve your business goals.

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CanadianSME
With an aim to contribute to the development of Canada’s Small and Medium Enterprises (SME’s), Cmarketing Inc is a potential marketing agency and a boutique business management company progressing rapidly in its scope. By acknowledging a firm reliance of the Canadian economy over its SMEs, the agency has resolved to launch a magazine, the pure focus of which will be the furtherance of Canadian SMEs, and to assist their progress with the scheduled token of enlightenment via the magazine’s pertinent content.
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