The NY Times published an interesting article about Hallmark’s use of topical humor as a strategy to lure women away from email.
“…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…”
Fortunately for Hallmark and other traditional card retailers, greeting card spam is damaging the reputation of competing online greeting card services. Whether or not they will be able to convert emailers to letter writers is questionable. Putting new cover art on old LP records won’t necessarily make people start buying them again. It is difficult to reverse the momentum of platform shifts. Even those of us who appreciate the aesthetic value of typewriters, vinyl records, horse-drawn carriages and thick Sunday newspaper editions use them less today. Technology is seductive.
