A Card’s For Life, Not Just For Christmas

Being a media savvy PR professional, I am wise to a number of the clever mind-tricks played by advertising and marketing professionals to entice me into parting with my money* Yet despite being distinctly impervious to messages, a recent moonpig advert caught my eye.

moonpig has launched a card with an inbuilt video, a fairly simple innovation by today’s standards, but in my opinion ingenious. Just upload your message to the card and hover a smartphone over the image and it comes to life and plays the video! It is like magic is actually real!

Magic aside though, I think this is a fantastic example of a company that has really innovated to remain relevant in the current climate.

The print industry has been under fire for a long time now. Consumer ebook sales in the UK increased by 366% last year while physical book sales in the first three months of 2012 were down 11%, compared with the same period in 2011. Similarly newspapers and magazines have been steadily spiralling into decline for over ten years.

But the growth of online has had a dramatic effect on the card industry too. Take, for example, the sad demise of Clinton Cards, which went into administration in mid-July. The retailer has made nearly 4,000 staff unemployed since May with the closure of 370 shops.

One problem the greeting card industry faces is that they just seem old-fashioned. Cards are something your gran sends you on your birthday. With the advent of email and online there just isn’t the same market out there to buy a physical card, many people will just text or leave a Facebook post. It does make me a little sad. I love getting a card, I keep some forever, an e-card just doesn’t retain that kind of sentimentality.

What moonpig has done, first by providing personalised messages, and now by including this baffling piece of wizardry to make cards actually move and talk, is bring the old-age card into the 21st century. Not only does this make cards profitable once again, but it also makes them exciting and accessible to kids. Instead of fighting the tide of new technology moonpig has ridden the wave, and I personally salute them!

* Actually, this is a lie. I am advertiser’s dream. On more than one occasion I have taken an unplanned trip the shops after seeing a dairy milk float across my screen. But for the purposes of this blog, we will ignore this fact.