Gay vague comes to Hallmark Cards…

Hallmark Cards… with a gay twist

Buying a greeting card for someone’s birthday, anniversary or if they’re feeling under the weather is pretty straightforward. But what if they’re undergoing chemotherapy or struggling with depression? "Get Well Soon" probably won’t cut it.

Likewise, most cards lining the store shelves don’t work on occasions as someone leaving an abusive spouse, undergoing drug rehab or declaring their sexual orientation.

Hallmark Cards Inc., which has built its $4.2 billion empire on sentiments for life’s happier times, is releasing a new line of cards that will speak to those and other situations that the company says have either been ignored by greeting card companies or received only a smattering of attention from niche players.

Well I just know I’m going to enjoy reading the "declaring my sexual orientation" card that’s somewhere between the So Sorry You Have Cancer and Congratulations On Your Drug Rehab cards…

No topics were off-limits, said company spokeswoman Rachel Bolton, noting two cards that could be sent to gay people who have disclosed their sexuality. The cards don’t directly refer to homosexuality, only extolling the person to "Be You" or "This is who I am" or featuring a rainbow, a symbol of gay pride.

Bolton said the writing is general enough for other uses, however, with one focus group member saying they would send it to a friend starting a new job.

"Our findings determined that people didn’t want to be labeled or identified,’’ Bolton said. "We want to be inclusive and not exclusive."

Coming from the company that was protecting the sanctity of stuffed bear family life a few years ago (more about that Here), I’m probably expected to regard this as progress of sorts.  Except it isn’t.  Hallmark isn’t merely trying to grab a piece of the gay dollar here, they’re trying to position themselves as "inclusive and not exclusive".  That card isn’t for gay customers.  You don’t market a card that’s too scared to utter the word "gay" to gay people who’ve taken that difficult, nerve wracking, terrifying step of coming out to family and friends.  Who the hell sends a card that can’t even utter the word "gay" to a gay person, congratulating them on coming out of the closet?  Be Who You Are…Just Don’t Say It…  That’s crap.  The card is PR, nothing more.  Here’s what’s going on…

The $7 billion greeting card industry already brims with tiny niche players who make and sell cards dealing with such things as serious illness or thanking caregivers, said Barbara Miller, a spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based Greeting Card Association.

But she said none of them have the ability to reach customers searching for those types of cards across the country.

Oh yes they do, if they want to exploit it.  It’s called the Internet lady.  It’s been four years since a Hallmark store had security escort a same sex couple out the door for trying to buy a pair of boy bears they’d discovered kissing, even though the magnets weren’t supposed to allow that, and now all of a sudden the company is a tad concerned that all those little niche players are going to run away with a big chunk of their market while they’re busy appealing to the lowest common denominator.  Having a Hallmark store in shopping malls from one end of the country to the other won’t keep the piles of cash coming, in an age where people can make or buy their cards online and print them out at home.  Yet even in the face of that, Hallmark can’t bring itself to reach out to that potential market, to actually be "inclusive and not exclusive".  On the other hand, that’s probably exactly why Hallmark gets it so right with their core market.

This isn’t progress, it’s window dressing.  Cheap, insincere sentiment from your one stop shopping center for all-purpose cheap, insincere sentiment.  What you send when how you feel about yourself is more important then what the person you’re sending it to is feeling.  Why is it not surprising that it’s a Hallmark moment.