This blog has moved to its new permanent home at http://nomadishere.com.
Seriously. Sometimes I see advertising, ok, very often I see advertising and I think to myself, “this is rediculous, how could this company willingly attempt to gain customers by playing on emotions or taking advantage of our hope or hardtimes…?” – but this is just too far. Adfreak called my attention to it.
Hallmark decided to release a bunch of cards that are meant to be given to people on a “journey” such as drug addiction, cancer, miscarriage, aging parent, divorce… They are calling them “New Cards With Real Words for Real Life” and it somehow makes me want to puke.
I think there are some things that are sacred, that you really shouldn’t blatantly *try* to make money from… a doctor getting rich from saving someone from dieing of cancer or a counselor that helps save a broken marriage is one thing – but Hallmark is just trying to make a buck of sadness, misery and tragedy. Not cool.
Nomadishere 
February 23, 2007 at 9:22 am
Is Hallmark really any different than the 12 Step groups and their “cute” slogans and sayings that have been glued to everything from t-shirts to clock faces and playing cards?
How about the rehabs themselves- engaging in branding campaigns, press release “marketing” and, for a very small niche, an embarressingly high amount of scraped content pages, fake message boards and blogs, and plenty of manufactured AdSense pages to capitalize on searches for Drug Rehab (14-18 CPC) and Drug Treatment Centers (11-15 CPC).
The treatment “industry”, though still very much owner-operated, employees a higher percentage of SEO’s and full-time webmasters than any (non-affiliate) niche I am aware of…with an “industry accepted” slant towards black hat.
Two disparate events helped change Addiction Treatment from a helping profession to a Just Win, Baby mind-set: The first time a Judge “sentenced” an addict/alcoholic to AA (in effect making it the Governments defacto Treatment, Research and Policy implementer), and the once-famous late night 1-800-Cocaine TV commercials that today would have been pulled by the FDA almost instantly.
Addiction Treatment is now a “profit center.” And when hundreds of millions in private money and probably billions in Federal are up for grabs, the Treatment part will always play second to profit…
Can you really blame Hallmark for wanting a piece of that?
I don’t see how it could ever
February 23, 2007 at 9:40 am
[…] Hallmark Tries to Capatilize on Drug Addiction, Cancer and Other Hardships […]
March 9, 2007 at 4:28 am
Its sad this kind of marketing is popular.