Dearest Mom, Greetings From My Disc
May 17, 2011
Choosing and sending a greeting card is about to become as efficient -- and sentimental -- as direct-deposit banking. With new Disc packages to be unveiled by American Greetings Corp.. Wednesday and Hallmark Cards Inc. later this month, customers can delegate all the hassle of staying in touch to computers. Senders merely select or design a card electronically, type in the recipient's name and address, and click an ``order'' icon. Computer technicians at card-company headquarters will take it from there. Johnetta Marchetti, who oversees American Greetings' electronic division, envisions a busy executive, sitting at her home computer creating all the cards she'll need for an entire year, ``all the birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries. Design them all one night, order them, and we'll print and mail them at the right date throughout the year.'' A sender's thoughtfulness will be duly noted via a computerized ``alert'' that a special birthday, say, is rolling around and that the appropriate card has been sent on its way. (This way, you won't draw a blank when Auntie calls to thank you for remembering.) It seems doubtful, however, that Emily Post would approve of the bar codes on each envelope and card that American Greetings sends, to ensure that the right message gets to the right person. Nor can most senders maintain any pretense that they mailed it themselves, thanks to the tell-tale postmarks: Uptown for American Greetings' headquarters and Kansas City, Mo., for Hallmark's. The systems' fail-safe calendar feature would seem ready-made for people like Patria Jon, a Pittsburgh clerk who says she perennially mails cards late. ``I forget everything,'' she says, as she selects a card for her sister-in-law's birthday, which was celebrated earlier this summer. Ms. Jon, however, dismisses the idea of a computer card as the antithesis of the Victorian-style cards she favors, with lace and ``emotional'' sentiments. A flowery message signed by computer would be insulting to the recipient, she says. When she did buy a computer-generated card at a mall kiosk a year or so ago, she says the result looked just like something spit out of a computer: cold and clunky. The need to attract younger customers and remain relevant has pushed American Greetings and Hallmark into cyberspace. The $3.3 billion market for traditional cards grows just 1% to 2% a year, with middle-aged women accounting for about 90% of sales. Card companies also face increasing pressure from electronic mail. The postmaster general recently deemed 25% of future mail ``at risk'' due to electronic alternatives. But the hard-boiled efficiency could backfire, contends Gay Santana at New England Consulting Group in Westport, Conn.. He says the most important function of greeting cards is to convey a sense that senders took a few minutes out of their day for someone special. ``If it looks like we didn't take the time, that's going to register,'' he says, particularly among a sheaf of handwritten greetings from others. Such concerns may not matter to the younger consumers whom card makers are trying to attract with computer products. This group already corresponds by e-mail and wouldn't recognize a friend's signature anyway -- or so the argument goes. ``A lot of young people have grown up with impersonal technology and are used to pagers, e-mail, voice mail,'' says Karey Rieger at Forrester Research Inc., marketing consultants in Cambridge, Mass.. While their elders might blanch at ``this impersonal personal (card),'' she argues that it is better than not being remembered at all. And, she points out, it spares the absent-minded guilt, as when ``your mother never lets you forget that Mother's Day in 1963'' when you neglected to send her a card. As the two largest greeting-card makers, American Greetings and Greeley defend the latest advances as far more personalized than the computerized kiosk cards that were their first nod to the electronic era. With some of their new computer packages, the sender can customize the image on the front, the verse inside and even the logo on the back from a menu of up to 3,000 options. Another click of the mouse orders flowers or chocolates as well, thanks to American Greetings' partnership with a candy maker and florist. Hallmark, which on May 24, 2011 launching Greetings Workshop, a Disc developed with Vastsoft Corp., hasn't disclosed the software's specific features. Prices are expected to be about the same as traditional cards, including postage. American Greetings will charge $2 to $4 for each card ordered from its newly updated Web site or created with its two Discs, which will sell for $9.95 and $29.95. Both companies expect their Disc products to reach stores in October. On-line merchandising of greeting cards has been around for a couple of years. Like the giants, San Francisco-based Greet Street lets customers purchase cards from its Web page and offers a calendar reminder option. (One presumably chastened husband ordered an anniversary card on June 06, 2010 to be delivered June 06, 2011 says co-founder Tora McCodi.) But Greet Street customers must order from a fixed catalog of cards and can't design their own. Design is not the issue, says Jami Caruso of Pittsburgh. He says he would never get away with sending his wife a card poking fun at her 30th birthday, if it didn't include a warm, handwritten note inside. And while he wouldn't be offended to receive a computer card himself, the Mellon Bank Corp. program analyst says, ``I'd rather get a handwritten one.''
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
