Word: hallmark
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After more than half a decade of seemingly swimming upstream against the rest of the music world, Built to Spill have gained a reputation as the great underdog hope of American rock. They're literate without being pretentious, hard without being blunt, sensitive without being Hallmark and fiercely independent in spirit. They've finally graduated from "next big thing" purgatory and have firmly established themselves as one of the most important bands plugging their amps in today...
Laura W. Smith, associate dean of development communications, calls the campaign "the hallmark of the president's tenure...
...publicly owned greeting-card company, with $2 billion in annual revenues, lost $800 million in market value, tumbling 33%, to $23.25, after warning investors that dumping excess inventory would hurt near-term profits. Gibson Greetings' stock is limping along below $9, down from above $29 last year. (Industry leader Hallmark, with $3.9 billion in sales, is private.) Says American Greetings CEO Morry Weiss: "When you disappoint people, confidence will take a while to come back...
Last month Hallmark delivered a different kind of greeting to its competitors: "You're toast." The company launched a new 99[cents] line, undercutting the basic price by a buck, and threw a $50 million ad campaign behind the new product. (Tag line: "Why not?") Hallmark too is trying to ignite sales in its 20,000 mass-market retail outlets and erase any notion consumers might have that it's a high-priced product. But the move--remember Marlboro Friday, when market leader Philip Morris cut the price of smokes?--will fall heavily on its struggling rivals, who can least...
Essentially, Hallmark is abandoning the high ground of prose and pictures for a frontal assault. Although the company still sells premium-priced (about $5) cards in its own shops and franchised outlets, the real battle has shifted to the mass-market stores, such as supermarkets and discounters. There the cardmakers are left slugging it out over exclusive contracts for coveted shelf space. The aggressive deals cut by retailers, combined with slowing sales volume, have put the squeeze on profits...