American Greetings is at it again with a new spot in time for Valentine's Day. While the spot really isn't about romance at all, it does a very nice job of repositioning the greetings card from "I'm too lazy to write something myself" to "I don't have another way to say it." Super smart strategy that elevates the importance and value of the card.
Here it is:
Execution normalizes a loss for words.
Each of the scenarios in the spot - the mother/daughter, the gay couple, the mother/husband - sets up a very normal and very human situation. A situation with loads of tension. And when there's tension it's not always easy to find the right words. Or if you find them it still may not be easy to say them.
The ad recognizes that truth by scrawling on the door or the wall what one of the people in the tense moment would like to say, but doesn't. Those words represent the marketing need.
Because we've all had tense moments where we don't know what to say. We've all been there, right? And seeing scene after scene, tension after tension, scrawling words after scrawling words, we can relate. Life can get tense.
Resolution resolves the tensions one by one.
At the end the appreciative husband - presumably a house husband - stops his wife as she leaves in her police uniform and hands her a card that says "We're so good together." It's a touching scene, particularly because she wasn't expecting this kind gesture.
But now, because we've seen the multiple bouts of tension in this spot, this card can only be perceived as the way to say what you might not otherwise say. Suddenly a greeting card is not a cheesy sentiment that someone else wrote and that you have to buy because it's a holiday. It's a carefully chosen articulation of how one person feels about the other on any day.
The card becomes a way to, as the spot says, "give meaning." Nice.
And this ad works not only for the card giver, the primary audience. It also happens to pave the way for the card receiver. After watching this ad, the card receiver can only perceive the gift of a card as a deeply personal gesture. More importantly, the card receiver will take the sentiment inside the card more seriously as well. Again, it's not a cheesy line that someone else wrote, it's the card giver's way of communicating something profound and personal.
By positioning the card as the resolution of human tension in this ad, our perception of a card (at all) improves, the value of the card increases and any perceived laziness of buying a pre-written card is transformed into pure thoughtfulness. You could say American Greetings, through this ad, has given meaning to their cards.
That's good advertising.
