It's a smart idea, and I never noticed it before visiting Duane Reade today, but apparently American Greetings has been marketing cards toward specific ethnic groups for years (I found corporate news from 2001 as earliest documentation). This line is called "In Rhythm," and celebrates Black History Month which I just learned is January. 
American Greetings has another line geared towards African Americans called Baobab Tree. A Baobab is what Raffiki lived in in The Lion King, I think; from Madagascar, it has a really fat trunk (swollen with water) with disproportionately smaller branches. Before 1995, the line was called was called Black
Impressions (source).They also have many lines in Spanish, obviously geared towards hispanics called Spanish Soft Touch, Momentos de Inspiracion, intuiciones, Karlitos Koala, and Design Studio ... En Espano.
Now on some level, I must admit I'm a bit jealous. I checked many of the cards, and most of them have cartoons or images, although I'd estimate about 1.5/10 have a white person. So if I'm looking for a card and want a person in it that looks somewhat like me, I have to shuffle through all the cards because there isn't a designated section for Caucasian cards. Perhaps it the line could be called "Fantasy Suburbia" or "English Oak."
That being said, I applaud AG on working their overpriced pieces of paper into niche markets. (Did you know cards can cost like $5?!). But why have they lost so much steam online? Their website has no spanish speaking option; their are no In Rhythm oriented e-cards, and when I searched for "Baobob" tree it asked me if i meant "boob."
Does this mean AG thinks the minorities they are courting in stores don't have enough weight to justify an online presence among what feels like hundreds (thousands?) of e cards?
No comments:
Post a Comment