Marketing campaign sends nearly 100 postcards daily to Swiss care home

Nearly 100 postcards arrive each day at the Huus Feldhof care home in Oberriet, in St Gallen’s Rhine Valley, SRF reported. The cards are being sent as part of a campaign inviting people to give residents a postcard tour of the world.

Staff distribute boxes of postcards and letters to the residents. Cards have arrived from places including Texas, Kazakhstan, Norway and Bulgaria.

The residents read the messages and try to decipher the handwriting. Staff help those with poor eyesight, while residents also read the postcards aloud to one another.

Susanne Tetzner, the home’s deputy director, said the cards were arriving “from all over the world”. One postcard from Kazakhstan described mountains, horses and camels, and sent greetings for the residents’ “world tour”.

The activity is intended to support the residents’ long-term memory and encourage them to recall their own experiences, according to the home.

The campaign began in early July, when Huus Feldhof posted an appeal on Instagram asking people to send holiday greetings. It became the care centre’s most-liked post by far. The home has worked with a regional marketing company on the campaign and has been active on social media for years.

A world map in the communal room records where the postcards come from. Orange markers stretch from Chile to Japan, from the South Pacific islands to Greenland, and from Cape Town to the North Cape.

Residents continue to browse through the hundreds of postcards every day. One resident said she had never expected so many cards to arrive at the care home. The campaign will run until the end of August.