Holiday Card Trend: Traditional Colors and Heartfelt Messages
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about how the greeting card companies started noticing the downturn in the economy months before the stock market fell. They first started noticing that traditional cards were selling better at the end of last year.
An early clue to the new direction: During brainstorming sessions held late last year for the 2008 holiday collection, nostalgia for simple holiday traditions like cookie-baking, walks through the snow and tree-trimming kept coming up among the writers, artists and trend experts in attendance. Then, amid the glitzy, festive tone that dominated last year's holiday-card designs, American Greetings noticed that traditional cards with heartfelt messages were selling surprisingly well.
By early this year, as the housing downturn accelerated and gas prices rose, the Cleveland-based company's research showed that consumers, spending more time at home, were focusing on personal relationships and reminiscing about happier times together.
American Greetings is going with deeper reds and greens on its Christmas cards and away from the cherry red they have used in recent years. They are using less pink and light blue. They say people are also more interested in longer copy on greeting cards as they seeker more meaningful and personal themes.
The text is deliberately long-winded. Before, cards had shorter, snappier messages. "Now people want longer copy," says Rochelle Lulow, creative director of American Greetings' editorial studio. "During difficult times, we see people wanting to connect on a deeper, emotional level that goes above and beyond." Another executive said: "We started seeing that at Mother's Day."
Also appearing on greeting cards this year is handholding like in the card pictured above from American Greetings that shows a couple holding hands while they take a walk in a winter scene. It retails for $3.99.
Handholding appears on many American Greetings cards this year, including one with a black-and-white image of a couple, seen from behind, walking down a snowy, tree-lined road. The message reads, "Let's spend some quiet time together...because being with you is my favorite thing to do."
Hallmark has also changed its card designs this year. They told the WSJ that their designs this year contain images that "are much more iconic and familiar." The article also talks about a summertime study American Greetings conducted called Voodoo which involved groups of women sitting in dimly lighted rooms with soft music playing. That study reminds us a little of Mad Men. It sounds like the top greeting card companies went to great lengths to try and come up with the right cards this year.
