American Greetings
World’s Toughest Job was the work that brought me to Mullen. I saw it out in the wild and thought to myself, “I need to work at an agency that does that.” I led strategy on that brand for years, where we made some really meaningful and important work to rescue a dying behavior and drive more meaningful connections between people.
World’s Toughest Job
I didn’t work on this, but I did write the Effie for it. It had been entered into the Jay Chiat Awards earlier that year and didn’t win anything. So when I got to Mullen, I rewrote it with fresh eyes, and we got the Grand Effie.
A DEVICE LIKE NO OTHER
How do you make a disruptive case for greeting cards in today’s digital-first world? With all of the fanfare you would expect from Apple or Samsung introducing their newest smartphone, American Greetings brought their decidedly analog communications device, the paper greeting card, to the world’s largest technology trade show to remind people of the power of meaningful connections. Our bait-and-switch online product launch and physical pop-up brand experience, “A Device Like No Other,” made CES attendees see cards differently, earned the attention of tech and mainstream media around the world, and increased consideration, purchase intent and relevance of cards.
The Challenge: Make a disruptive case for paper greeting cards in a digital-first world to drive reappraisal and purchase intent.
The Insight: Cards are a powerful messaging device.
The Idea: At the world’s largest technology trade show (CES), launch the world’s most powerful messaging device: a card from American Greetings.
Bringing the Idea to Life: Modeled “A Device Like No Other” after the greatest tech product launches: tease, reveal, and get people to interact with it via on-the-ground brand experience.
Results: Increased consideration and purchase intent of paper greeting cards by double-digit statistically significant margins and drove $1.2M worth of earned media coverage for American Greetings.
Give meaning
How do you make a case for cards in a world threatening to leave them behind? Stop trying to sell cards, and start selling what they’re in service of: honoring the real people, relationships and experiences in life that matter but often go unacknowledged. Online film seeded with like-minded influencers, American Greetings’ “Give Meaning” campaign created empathy for two powerful, difficult, all-too-common yet unacknowledged human experiences (the first Mother’s Day without Mom, and the struggle not to be a parent but to become one). Additionally, it drove reappraisal of cards, global press attention, and support and understanding for many.
The Challenge: In a world threatening to leave them behind, reinstate the power and relevance of paper greeting cards to increase consideration and brand purchase intent.
The Insight: Cards don’t matter; people do.
The Idea: Stop selling cards and start selling what they’re in service of: honoring the real relationships and experiences that matter in life but often go unacknowledged.
Bringing the Idea to Life: “Give Meaning” films created empathy for two powerful, yet unacknowledged human experiences: the first Mother’s Day without Mom, and the struggle to become a parent.
Results: Reappraisal, quality engagement and significant earned media proved our endline true: “A card is just a card. But in the right moment it means everything.”
Connections build us
With retail shelf space shrinking, and sales in significant YoY decline, greeting cards were dying. So we blew up the traditional method of marketing cards, shifting the benefit of card-giving from the receiver to the giver—from “it makes them feel good” to “it makes you feel good.” We tied our dying consumer behavior to a thriving one: wellness. By demonstrating how cards nurture the relationships proven to make us well, we made card-giving a strategy for wellness. Our disruptive approach, “Connections Build Us,” drove relevance, purchase intent, and incremental retail distribution worth $150M in annual revenue for American Greetings.
The Challenge: Restore relevance to a declining category with a motivating argument for giving cards every day rather than solely on occasions.
The Insight: Good, close relationships are the key to happiness and health.
The Idea: Make “relationship care” (giving cards) a strategy for wellness by illuminating the profound impact it has on how we feel.
Bringing the Idea to Life: “Connections Build Us” demonstrated the importance of card-giving in the context of current wellness behaviors like diet, exercise, and self-care.
Results: Drove relevance, reappraisal, purchase intent, and increased distribution worth $150M in annual incremental revenue for American Greetings.