As we hurtle towards the end of the (alleged) UK summer, we thought it would be an appropriate time to reflect on the season via the prism of Touchnote. We counted, we sorted and we tallied to produce the first ever Touchnote Postcard Poll. Specifically we looked at 2000 postcards over two weeks in August from UK, US and Germany… three of our most popular postcard destinations.

We have great pleasure - and a little bit of confusion - in releasing the results of the first ever Touchnote Postcard Poll. A snapshot of modern-day postcard sending if you like.

Rest assured that all results were aggregated and collated completely anonymously.

Drum roll please…

• 38% of UK postcard-senders sent images of their children vs. 29% from the US. Germans had 24% choosing photos of their children

• Americans proved to be the funniest with 15% of all those sending postcards displaying ‘funny’ or irreverent pictures, followed by the UK (9%) and Germany (8%)

• Germans proved the biggest romantics with 32% of all postcards sent featuring couples/romantic images, the US and UK were at 19% & 17% respectively

• Other interesting findings showed Brits beating Americans and Germans in a kiss-off, with UK sending ‘xx kisses’ in 45% of the postcards sent. Lagging way behind were the Americans and Germans (less than 1% each)

• Dogs were the most popular pet across all three of the countries surveyed.  Only 1% of total cards featured other pets or animals

Other findings include:

• Just 42% of postcards were actually sent while senders were on holiday

• Interestingly, only 15% of total images resembled the scenic postcard of the past

• Birthday and wedding images featured in 3% of all postcards

• A small percentage (0.2%) used postcards to share pictures of their pregnancy scans

We asked an expert in personal communications to take a look at the findings and here’s what she had to say:

“It’s heartening to see that with the preponderance of text messages and email, couples still show romance with a real note. That kids and pets are some of the most popular images isn’t surprising at all – those Kodak moments are still ones that we want to treasure. The poll has shown that the age-old desire to combine that photo with a message and a kiss is as alive and well – and that’s a good thing. And very interesting to see that Germans have really taken to expressing their love in modern ways,” said Carole Spiers, Author on Personal Communication & Stress Management and BBC Guest Broadcaster

Was great to see our German friends fare so well in the lurrrve stakes.. perhaps Touchnote has inadvertently facilitated the German romantic revolution? Hmmmm… maybe we’re reading too much into it.

What do you think? Are the results true to form or way off the mark? How would this have differed had we included other countries?