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To Compete With E-Mail Greetings, Funny Cards Try to Be Topical
“How can a working mom get 8 hours sleep?” is the question on the cover of a greeting card newly on the store racks.
No need to open the card to find out. “Divide it into two nights” is the punch line, delivered right beneath the cover drawing of a half-awake mother besieged by three disheveled toddlers and a dog eager to be walked.
Made to elicit a knowing smile as well as a rapid purchase, the card is part of an overhaul of its humor line that American Greetings introduced in June to highlight funny, everyday situations. That included enlisting the comedian Ellen DeGeneres for its new line of Ellen humor cards. In July, Hallmark Cards also unveiled a batch of reality-based humor cards.
Competing for consumers who spend less time browsing to find the perfect card and who increasingly communicate with friends electronically, the two companies — which dominate the $7.5 billion industry — are appealing to women who, according to their research, like humorous takes on their everyday travails. They also purchase 80 percent of all paper greeting cards.
“Women told us that everyday life had funnier situations than anything that is made up,” said Beth Murdoch, director of funny cards for American Greetings, who led the company’s six-month look at contemporary humor.
By pushing hard on this genre, the card companies hope to promote the idea that greeting cards can be sent anytime, not just on holidays and special occasions. Given how accustomed people have become to sending funny e-mail messages for no particular reason, they may start to view traditional cards in the same light, the logic goes.
While the paper card market is declining, it is still five times as large as the e-card market, according to the Greeting Card Association, a trade group. Ninety percent of United States households still buy paper greeting cards, and the average household buys 30 a year, the association said.
Although it is also unclear how quickly the greeting card market is shifting online, newer forms of communication — not just e-mail, but also social networks and chat boards — do seem to threaten its relevance.
“Greeting cards are really a 20th century model of communication,” said Pamela N. Danziger, president of Unity Marketing, a research and consulting firm. “There is so much more opportunity now to personalize and individualize and get a unique greeting by other means, including sites like FaceBook or MySpace. Even e-cards just mimic the paper version.”
While Hallmark has no firm plans to have a presence on social networking sites, American Greetings in mid-July introduced kiwee.com, which offers free social expressions, including postcards and emoticons, that can be posted to MySpace and MSN accounts.
In the offline world, American Greetings had a 10.6 percent dip last year over 2005 for sales of what it calls its everyday cards, which are mostly birthday cards and which make up 38 percent of total card sales. To shore up the category, American Greetings started making some strategic changes last year, like reducing the time it takes to get new cards to stores and revamping its displays to show more of the cards’ covers.
The company, which is the second-largest card seller and had $1.7 billion in sales in 2006, also undertook its first research in a decade to find out what women find funny. Its writers, artists and planners studied contemporary humor for six months, taking trips to see Monty Python’s “Spamalot,” Jerry Seinfeld’s stand-up comedy show and “Respect,” a musical about how women are portrayed in popular culture.
“It got the wheels turning,” said Rochelle Lulow, American Greetings’ senior program director.
One outcome was that two-thirds of the American Greetings cards introduced last month were about amusing real-life experiences, up from less than 30 percent, Ms. Murdoch said.
“We do a lot of refining and tweaking of our cards,” she said, “but an overhaul is pretty rare.”
Among the newer offerings are 32 Ellen cards, which feature a drawing of the comedian on the front with offbeat prose inside. One, for example, has Ms. DeGeneres saying: “You’re such a good friend, I feel like I can tell you anything.” The inside reads: “ ... But then the police would consider you an ‘accessory.’ ”
American Greetings found that men still gravitated to the jabs or gag-type humor in cards, but that women wanted funny takes on things like the difficulties of balancing work and family.
“Humor that belittles ethnic groups and nationalities is out,” said John Morreall, a religious studies professor at the College of William and Mary who studies humor. “People want something that is real, and says that ‘we’re all in this together.’ ”
Hallmark, too, has its sights set on the frequent humor-card buyer, said Stephen B. King, its creative director. This month Hallmark unveiled more-topical cards in its Shoebox line, known for its oddball characters and sarcastic humor.
Stephen B. King, a Hallmark creative director, with some of the new greeting cards based on topical themes and humor.
“Our goal is to get 80 percent to 90 percent of our customers to laugh out loud,” he said from Hallmark headquarters in Kansas City, “by presenting more characters and more real-life situations.”
In October, Hallmark began its own research exercise. Several dozen employees steeped themselves in popular culture by watching television and YouTube, and checking out eBay.
Now, nearly one-fifth of the latest cards in the Shoebox line are drawn from current events. For example, Mr. King said, a “Paris Goes to Jail” card “was on the stands while she was in her cell.”
Above a forlorn Ms. Hilton, it reads: “This is the really, really, really, really simple life.”
The shift toward humor and current events is being mirrored online. On American Greetings’ three main sites — americangreetings.com, bluemountain.com and, its only free site, egreetings.com — about 27 percent of the e-cards are meant to be funny. One of the more popular is a sock puppet that sings birthday greetings in a mock operatic style; the card has drawn nearly 650 comments from users.
After relatively flat growth, the traffic in e-cards has risen 15 percent to 20 percent this year, based on “our new humor and innovation,” said Sally Babcock, general manager of the AG Interactive division of American Greetings.
Some frequent card-buyers have noticed the companies’ efforts. Jessica A. Nowzaradan, a business systems analyst for a hospital chain based in Austin, said she mails about 100 cards a year to family and friends.
“Cards are funnier now,” she said, “And more seem to be targeted at women. When I see something that I know is right for a friend, I send it because I want to make her smile and laugh.”
