DATE=9-29-03

TYPE=English Feature

NUMBER=7-37898

TITLE=Greeting Cards: Magic in a Folded Paper

BYLINE=Faiza Elmasry

TELEPHONE=619-0940

DATELINE=Washington

EDITOR=Faith Lapidus

CONTENT=

INTRO: Whether it's Halloween or Thanksgiving, a birthday or wedding anniversary, there is always a reason to receive or send a greeting card. This folded piece of paper can so cleverly communicate feelings that it remains popular in our e-mail age. As Faiza Elmasry tells us, one of the challenges that has always faced greeting card producers is finding new ways to express the same old message.

AUDIO: // CUT 1 GRAY//

"I've always written my own greeting cards to send to people and assumed that other people do the same."

TEXT: Bill Gray was the editor of a small town newspaper when he saw an ad for professional greeting card writers.

AUDIO: //CUT 2 GRAY//

"The ad said: 'if you think you can do this send us some ideas.' So I sent them 10 ideas and was fortunate enough to be hired."

TEXT: Mr. Gray has been working as a greeting card writer for Hallmark Cards since 1995. The 90-year-old company employs more than 700 writers, designers, artists, photographers and stylists. Together, they create about 23,000 new and redesigned cards every year. Mr. Gray says he likes his job because it allows him to reflect on human feelings.

AUDIO: // CUT 3 GRAY//

"This is all about basic emotions. I think emotions have stayed the same over time, throughout history. There are emotions that a newly-wed couple feel that are the same as their grandparents."

TEXT: Although emotions may remain the same, the ways to express them have changed over time. Molly Wigand has been a greeting card writer for more than two decades, known for her humorous cards for couples. She says being aware of others' emotions is an asset for a greeting card writer.

AUDIO: //CUT 4 WIGAND//

"I like writing cards for spouses, to people who have more complicated relationships. I like to observe and try to imagine what that particular person that I m seeing stuck in traffic might want to say to her husband on Valentine's Day."

TEXT: But many people cannot put their emotions into words, and Bill Gray says that's where he comes in - his job is to help those people express themselves.

Audio: //CUT 5 GRAY//

"I think what you want to wind up with is a greeting card that people look at and say:'That sounds just like Uncle Burt.' Or, 'I'm going to buy that because it sounds just like me.'"

TEXT: The importance of finding just the right card is what makes people spend time wandering patiently along different aisles of displays, until they finally see what they want.

AUDIO: //CUT 6 GRAY//

"A writer who works a few booths down from me recently wrote a card that features a middle age couple. On the cover, they were looking out to sea and the man was pointing out to something and saying to the woman: 'That island out there sticks out, that's called a stick out thing.' And inside of the card it says: 'Congratulations: you've reached the age where you can make things up.' And he received a fan letter from a woman who said she loved that card so much that she was going to buy a hundred of them and that would be the only card she was ever going to send from then on."

TEXT: Greeting cards are a $7.5 billion a year industry. Marianne McDermott, with the Greeting Card Association, says it's a lucrative market.

AUDIO: //CUT 7 McDERMOTT//

"You'd be surprised. Hallmark is a very large company, one of the Fortune 500. American Greetings is also a very large company. But there are, to our estimate about 2500 greeting card publishers. So, there are many small publishers most of them find a certain niche that works for them in the market place."

TEXT: The Written Word in Washington D.C sells cards produced by small publishers. Owner Paul Rubenstein says although greeting cards are widely available, in grocery stores and many other shops, people still come to his store for cards. He says his customers prefer to express their emotions in their own words.

AUDIO: //CUT 8 RUBENSTEIN//

"[OPT] I think the reason that our cards sell so well is because they are unique. We sort of deal with greeting cards from very small handmade artists to big companies, and companies from all across the world actually. [END OPT] Most of the cards that we sell, do not, actually, have a lot of words. They might have one or two lines. Our customers do not want pre-packaged words that are sort of generic that 10 thousand people across the country are going to buy. Maybe the card would say 'Happy Birthday' or 'Deepest sympathy', but they're going to write their own messages."

AUDIO: //CUT 9 CUSTOMERS// [OPT CUT]

"I often get blank cards, and I look for cards that aren't necessarily pre-printed mass-market greeting cards. I like interesting ones that are by smaller card-makers that make smaller numbers of cards... and I love it if there is a great combination of words and picture."

"This store has really unusual cards, and interesting cards, so I come in here to stock up."

"Sometimes I make my own cards. I get the paper from here, because the people that I send it to, actually like that it's unique and creative and that it's actually hand-made."

TEXT: Mr. Rubenstein says the greeting card business is better today than it was twenty years ago, in spite of the popularity of electronic greeting cards on the Internet.

AUDIO: //CUT 10 RUBENSTEIN//

"One of the things that makes greeting cards meaningful particularly now when people are so used to communicating instantaneously through fax, e-mail and telephone, is the idea that someone still goes out and buys a card. Nobody buys a greeting card and puts it through the computer. You actually have to sit down and think about what you're going to write. I think the recipient still considers that to be special."

TEXT: … special enough, he says, that greeting cards often become part of a personal 'memory book' collection, along with cherished family pictures and letters.