Using GCA’s Thinking of You Week (underway now, 24-30 September) as the springboard, Paperchase has launched a punchy PR campaign that remind people of the potency of sending cards. It has backed this up with a number of customer initiatives that seek to reward and encourage card sending.
Under the heading of ‘The power of the card in a digital age’, Paperchase’s press release sent to the consumer media at larger rams home the message of how greeting cards are more than holding their own in a time of unprecedented communication alternatives.
It points out that sending cards is ‘not something that is restricted to the older generation – research has shown that millennials not only appreciate writing more but are more likely to keep hold of hand-written keepsakes than those in their fifties.’
Paperchase reveals that its sales of cards for family members have increased 10% year on year underlining the importance of this tangible way of show you care. However the retailer highlights that it’s not just family members or birthdays that customers are buying cards for, ‘there’s a shift towards celebrating different life events and achievements by sending cards, while some send a card simply as a note to let someone know they are thinking of them,’ says the release.
Searches on the Paperchase.com website include sentimental terms like ‘hug card’, ‘I miss you’ and ‘Proud of you’, to a more modern take on love such as ‘divorce cards’ and ‘tinder card’. The rise in ‘insta-worthy’ lifestyles has seen an uplift in messages of positivity on cards in particular postcards, Paperchase’s most popular design states ‘You Got This’ and has sold over 40,000 units this year alone.
This week during Thinking of You Week’; anyone buying a card from Paperchase will be given a free sticker which reinforces the positive message of sending cards, plus is giving away free cards randomly in over 160 stores nationwide.
In addition, everyone involved in the Paperchase Treat Me loyalty scheme will also benefit from a new treat whereby for every seven cards purchased, they will receive their next card free.
Paperchase however is just one of many members of the greeting card community to be embracing Thinking of You Week this year.
As well as running events in its own three shops, Belly Button Designs has also sent a batch of cards out to several UK armed forces bases in Germany.
Meanwhile for the fourth year running, James Mace, sales and marketing manager of The Art File team headed to Nottingham Children’s Hospital, at the Queens Medical Centre to deliver some cards as part of its Thinking of You Week activities. Nurses and doctors on the wards also encourage parents, friends and visitors to write cards to the children they’re visiting, creating a wave of positivity and thoughtfulness at difficult times.
Top: Paperchase is pushing the power of cards.
