29. Greeting Cards

Summary

Podcast Episode Summary

Podcast: The Economics of Everyday Things
Episode: 29 — Greeting Cards
Host: Zachary Crockett (Freakonomics Network)
Air Date: April 9, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the unexpectedly sizable and ever-evolving greeting card industry—a $7 billion market that has not only weathered technological change but actually found new life in the age of digital communication. Host Zachary Crockett examines who buys greeting cards, what makes them appealing in the modern era, how card companies devise their designs, and why millennials are saving—rather than killing—this business. Along the way, Crockett interviews industry insiders, including George White (President of Up with Paper, former President of the American Greeting Card Association) and Mia Mercado (former Hallmark editor), to uncover the quirks, economics, and creativity behind sending sentiments on cardstock.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Size and Structure of the Greeting Card Industry

• Main Players: The industry is dominated by Hallmark and American Greetings, which together control ~80% of U.S. sales. Over 2,000 other publishers cater to various niches (03:02).
• Annual Volume: About 6.5 billion greeting cards are sold each year in America (02:21).
• Types of Cards: The market divides into "everyday" (e.g. birthday, sympathy—over half of all sales) and "seasonal" (e.g. Christmas, Mother’s Day, Easter). Christmas is, by far, the biggest seasonal driver, moving 1.5 billion cards annually (03:38).

The Demographics: Who’s Buying Cards, and Why?

• Primary Customers: Women (85% of buyers), often aged 40–65, and typically the "kin keeper" in a family—the person who maintains social connections (04:19).
• Generational Shifts:
  • Boomers: Historically heavy buyers.
  • Gen X: Bought fewer cards, giving the industry a brief scare about its future (05:04).
  • Millennials: Have revived and reshaped the industry—they spend more on cards, choose higher-end, unique designs, and reserve cards for friends who are truly "cardworthy." (05:48; 06:10)
  • Millennial Buying Habits: Prefer non-standard, highly differentiated, and often more expensive cards. They want the card to reflect the uniqueness of their relationship (06:10).

    • “They're card worthy friends that they have to find a card for. And that card can't be a run of the mill card.” — George White (06:20)

How and Where Greeting Cards are Sold

• Retail Monopoly: Big chains like CVS and Walgreens carry mostly Hallmark and American Greetings cards, creating virtual monopolies in those aisles (06:50).
• Small Brands and Alternative Venues: Artisanal card-makers, sought by younger consumers, distribute in boutique stores, jewelry shops, dress shops, even car washes—places less likely to be on a national retailer’s radar (07:24).

The Art and Economics of Designing Cards

• Trend Tracking: Up with Paper and others keep an eye on what’s ‘hot’ with younger buyers—sometimes unexpectedly popular animals (e.g., llamas, owls) (10:16).

• Small Firm Risks: Mid-size companies can launch about 100 new designs/year—each must succeed, as there’s little margin for error (10:50).

  • “We can't afford to have any that don't work.” — George White (10:50)

• Hallmark’s Scale: Produces about 10,000 new cards per year; uses analytics, focus groups, and dedicated editorial teams to keep ideas fresh and relevant (10:53, 11:12).

  • Creative Brainstorming:
    • “It would literally be conversations like, so dogs are performing really well for birthdays, for dads. It seems like cats aren't doing as well. Maybe we want to do less cat cards and people saying this straight faced.” — Mia Mercado (12:26)

• Writing Style — The “Universally Specific” Conundrum:

  • Cards must be intimate and emotionally resonant, yet broad enough to apply to more than one very specific relationship (12:46).

    • “The things that you want that card to say need to feel emotionally relevant to that relationship, but not be so limiting that it would only appeal or apply to one specific person.” — Mia Mercado (12:46)

  • A special emphasis now: never making cards that would “turn millennials off” (13:20).

Millennial Taste: Humor, Edge, Authenticity

• Tone Shift: New generations crave cards that are self-deprecating, brutally honest, and sometimes edgy—cards that feature “explicit, offensive word[s]” (by Hallmark standards, typically tame) (13:50).

  • “I remember doing a whole collection that every single card had some kind of explicit, offensive word on the front. The tamest of those would be like damn or like hell.” — Mia Mercado (13:50)

• Challenge From Internet Culture: Physical cards now must compete against social media posts, texts, e-cards, and a new universe of independent artists on platforms like Etsy and Fiverr. Hallmark’s one-year design cycle can’t keep pace with viral internet trends that change weekly (14:08-14:47).

  • “A lot of the things that are funny online are flash in the pan. So I don't know. Nobody's going to want to buy a card that has a Twitter joke on it from seven months ago.” — Mia Mercado (14:47)

• Veterans vs. Young Creatives: The generational gap sometimes leads to surprising hits—e.g., a card featuring “a possum in a trash can,” which became a top seller despite skepticism from older staff (15:26).

  • “I'm a young boomer. I would not send that to somebody, but they totally would.” — George White (15:50)

Economics and the Postal Service

• Profit Breakdown: A $6 card probably cost the store $3, and netted only about $0.30 in profit for the company (16:52).
• The Price of Mailing & The Forever Stamp:
  • 60% of greeting cards are mailed; if postage becomes too expensive, demand drops.
  • The Greeting Card Association lobbied for the Forever Stamp to keep mailing affordable—actively working with Congress and the Postal Service (16:19, 16:36).

On the ‘Value’ of Greeting Cards

• Emotional Return on Investment:

  • “I think it's one of the best values in the economy today. On that day, in that moment, that person knows that I was thinking about them. That's pretty powerful, right?” — George White (17:15)

• A More Measured View:

  • “…I don't know how anyone else thinks of greeting cards, which is just like, I don't really think about… greeting cards.” — Mia Mercado (17:30)

The Limits of Market Research and Trend Chasing

• Creativity Over Data:

  • “Like any creative thing, there's only so much science that you can put into it. There's only so far that a number can go before you're like, well, I think people just like this card because there's a cute puppy on it.” — Mia Mercado (18:05)

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Memorable Quotes & Key Timestamps

• “The 2023 Louis Award goes to a card with a bunch of flowers that says, remember, you're an infinitely iconic bitch having a human experience.” — Zachary Crockett (01:22)
• On millennials:
  • “Not only do they like to send cards, but they like to send really highly differentiated cards. So they have no problem spending a lot more money on greeting cards.” — George White (05:48)
• On designing for millennials:
  • “Pretty much every single card line that I worked on, there was at least a portion of that discussion that was about making cards that wouldn't turn millennials off.” — Mia Mercado (13:20)
• On the challenge of timing and trends:
  • “A lot of the things that are funny online are flash in the pan.” — Mia Mercado (14:47)
• On the surprising success of odd designs:
  • “A possum in a trash can... when you pulled the tab, a possum jumped out... said, let's get trashed...and it's one of our best sellers.” — George White (15:26)
• On the industry's lobbying power:
  • “The Greeting Card Association pushed for the creation of the Forever Stamp…” — Zachary Crockett (16:19)

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Notable Moments with Timestamps

• Louis Awards and modern card humor (01:22)
• Industry size and leading companies (02:21–03:02)
• Demographics and ‘kinkeepers’ (04:19–04:45)
• Baby Boomers vs. Gen X vs. Millennials (05:04–05:56)
• Millennial ‘cardworthy’ friends insight (06:10–06:50)
• Boutique sellers and distribution changes (07:24)
• The writing and design process at Hallmark (11:12–13:15)
• Millennial tastes and humor in cards (13:50)
• Legacy brands and the problem of internet trend-chasing (14:08–14:47)
• The case of the “Let’s get trashed” card (15:26–15:50)
• Mail’s cost impact & industry role in postal policy (16:05–16:36)
• Value of greeting cards (17:15, 17:30)
• Limits of analytics in creativity (18:05)

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Episode Tone & Takeaways

The episode is witty, personable, slightly tongue-in-cheek, and packed with trivia, market insight, and “bet you didn’t know” facts. Crockett and his guests balance data about the economics of greeting cards with human stories of creativity, changing tastes, and the enduring value of a physical card—even as technology speeds ahead.

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Conclusion:
Greeting cards are far from obsolete; they occupy a unique space between commerce, art, tradition, and real human connection. As Millennials become “kinkeepers,” their higher standards and taste for authenticity are transforming a staid industry—one trash-possum at a time.

Transcript

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[Zachary Crockett]

Hollywood has the Oscars. The music industry has the Grammys, Broadway, the Tonys. And then there's this first category.

[Mia Mercado]

We have birthday General $5.

[Walmart Business Announcer]

And below.

[Mia Mercado]

Paper Salad. Great Aero Graphics, Fine moments, and Hallmark cards.

[George White]

And the winner is.

[Zachary Crockett]

The winner is Paper Salad. This is the Louis Awards, where a panel of judges selects the year's best greeting cards. More than a thousand entrants compete in 51 birthday sympathy. Thank you all. The major holidays in the friendship and encouragement category. The 2023 Louis Award goes to a card with a bunch of flowers that says, remember, you're an infinitely iconic bitch having a human experience. The winner in the Christmas humor category reads, happy collecting new material for your therapist holidays. Lines like those are now the backbone of the $7 billion greeting card business. A business that has found some new customers.

[George White]

The millennial generation is now the largest buyers of greeting cards. From a dollar standpoint, they've sa for

[Zachary Crockett]

the Freakonomics radio network. This is the economics of everyday things. I'm Zachary Crockett. Today, greeting cards. Every year, Americans buy around 6.5 billion greeting cards. They come in all different shapes, sizes, colors and designs. There are cards that sing to you, cards with LED lights, and cards with elaborate pop up designs. Some are blank inside. Others contain puns or sentimental poems. Two privately owned card giants, Hallmark Cards and American Greetings, control an estimated 80% of the greeting card market. The rest of the industry is fragmented.

[George White]

There are 2,000 additional publishers of greeting cards in the United States that range from people you know, just producing a few cars that are sold to one retailer down the street to companies like mine, which is what we would call a mid sized company.

[Zachary Crockett]

That's George White. He's the president of Upwith Paper, a specialty greeting card firm based in Ohio. He's also a former president of the American Greeting Card Association, a trade group that represents card makers all over the world. White says the companies that sell you greeting cards divide them into two everyday and seasonal.

[George White]

Everyday business would be Birthdays, Wedding, New Baby, Sympathy, Thinking of youf Card. That is over half of the total business. But seasonal. There are huge spikes in seasonal. Christmas is the biggest holiday by far. So out of the six and a half billion cars we talked about selling a year, about 1.5 of those are Christmas. And then there's a big drop from Christmas to Mother's Day and another drop down to Easter. And then, because not enough people care about fathers, Father's Day is even lower than that.

[Zachary Crockett]

Nine out of 10 U.S. households buy greeting cards every year. And buyers tend to fit a certain profile.

[George White]

85% of the cards are bought by women. And in general, the people who buy cards are. One of my favorite phrases in the industry is kin keeper. The kinkeeper is usually, you know, an aunt or something. And the aunt is the one who keeps connections with all the cousins and the uncles and the nephews and the nieces. Those are generally people between 40 and 60 to 65. Those people know the most people they'll ever know in their life, both younger and older, for whom they would send cards to.

[Zachary Crockett]

When baby boomers entered this age bracket in the 1980s and 90s, they bought cards like crazy. Christmas cards, Valentine's Day cards, birthday cards, thank you cards. Any occasion, big or small, was marked with a card. But that practice did not get passed down.

[George White]

The next demographic that came in was Generation X. And for whatever reason, Generation X did not buy greeting cards at nearly the rate of their preceding generation. And so there was a lot of panic in my industry as to what was going to happen.

[Zachary Crockett]

Then the Millennials came along. Now it's not every day you hear about millennials saving an industry. My generation is usually accused of killing things. Diamonds, cable tv, shopping malls, banks, nine to five jobs, business suits, movie theaters, fabric softener, marriage. But White says millennials, the folks born between 1981 and 1996, have jump started a new era in greeting cards.

[George White]

Not only do they like to send cards, but they like to send really highly differentiated cars. So they have no problem spending a lot more money on greeting cards.

[Zachary Crockett]

While boomers still buy the most greeting cards, Millennials now spend more money on them than their elders. The market has shifted toward more expensive cards, and that has a lot to do with the way shopping habits have changed.

[George White]

So traditionally, the boomer would buy cards by going into the big drugstore, the big grocery store. They would walk down this giant aisle of cards and they would spend their five or 10 minutes and find the cards that they needed. The millennials have sets of friends that they can send a text to. Happy Birthday. They have friends they can post on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok Happy Birthday. And then they have friends they call cardworthy. And that phrase comes up again and again. Research, which is really cool. They're card worthy friends that they have to find a card for. And that card can't be a run of the mill card. When their friend receives that card, they want that card to reflect the relationship that they have with that person.

[Zachary Crockett]

The greeting card giants, Hallmark and American Greetings, they have their own branded retail stores where they sell cards. They also have distribution deals with huge national retailers like CVS and Walgreens. At many big retail chains, these two brands have a near monopoly on the card aisle. The more artisanal personal cards that millennials are looking for are more likely to come from smaller card brands, which can't compete with the likes of Hallmark for shelf space. So they tend to set up shop in different settings.

[George White]

What you're seeing with the millennial generation is a tremendous diversity of stores now carrying greeting cards that didn't used to. So a jewelry store, a dress store, car washes. Car washes are great sellers of cars. In California, for example, anywhere where there are women with money and taste, you go into these little stores and they'll have 20 different suppliers of cards with just a handful of cards from each of these suppliers.

[Zachary Crockett]

But what exactly makes a greeting card appealing to a millennial? And who comes up with all those sayings inside the fold that's coming up?

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this

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[Zachary Crockett]

Paper the greeting card design process begins by looking at what's trending with younger demographics.

[George White]

A few years ago, llamas were hot. Don't ask me why these things happen, but they just do. Owls were big 10 years ago and then you try to match what's trending with the sentiment. So you know, does an owl work for birthday? Maybe. Does an owl work for sympathy? No.

[Zachary Crockett]

Up with Paper makes premium pop up cards that sell for $8 to $15 each and they only make around 100 new designs a year. Most small and mid sized card companies like this are don't have a budget for market research. They generally go with their intuition and hope that every card is a hit.

[George White]

We can't afford to have any that don't work.

[Zachary Crockett]

Hallmark, on the other hand, makes 10,000 new cards every year and the process they use to come up with new ideas is a bit more scientific. It involves focus groups, psychographics, and entire teams of writers and editors who focus on specific niches.

[Mia Mercado]

My name is Mia Mercado. I used to be an editor at Hallmark. My job was to work with the editorial director and the art director and basically decide what writing goes on the greeting cards.

[Zachary Crockett]

Mercado worked at Hallmark for five years. She says the company had a card for just about everything.

[Mia Mercado]

Oh, yeah, like Christmas cards. There were ones that were for mail carriers and hairdressers and pet sitters and teachers.

[Zachary Crockett]

Hallmark employees constantly visit the card aisles at their own stores and at major retailers to find out how cards and categories are selling.

[Mia Mercado]

There were people on the staff that their entire job was analytics. We would do like this analysis inventory of the cards that were out there. We would have information on how well the cards sold and our job as people working on the writing would then be to come up with a writing proposal or writing plan that we would pitch to the writing team.

[Zachary Crockett]

Once that data is gathered, teams of designers and writers convene in planning rooms to hash out ideas. Sometimes, Mercado says the meetings would get a little surreal.

[Mia Mercado]

It would literally be conversations like, so dogs are performing really well for birthdays, for dads. It seems like cats aren't doing as well. Maybe we want to do less cat cards and people saying this straight faced.

[Zachary Crockett]

There's also a specific art to coming up with the copy in side cards.

[Mia Mercado]

Hallmark had this saying universally specific, which is very much an oxymoron when you're working on something that in theory is supposed to be given to someone in a really intimate moment, like at a funeral or to my wife on our anniversary. The things that you want that card to say need to feel emotionally relevant to that relationship, but not be so limiting that it would only appeal or apply to one specific person.

[Zachary Crockett]

Throughout all of these conversations, one thing is critically important.

[Mia Mercado]

Pretty much every single card line that I worked on, there was at least a portion of that discussion that was about making cards that wouldn't turn millennials off.

[Zachary Crockett]

For decades, greeting cards played it pretty safe. They were family friendly, polite and sappy. Those cards still exist and they continue to sell. But the designs that appeal to millennials tend to avoid traditional motifs. They're self deprecating, brutally honest and edgy.

[Mia Mercado]

I remember doing a whole collection that every single card had some kind of explicit, offensive word on the front. The tamest of those would be like damn or like hell. I mean, like most things at Hallmark, the things that were considered taboo were pretty mild.

[Zachary Crockett]

Hallmark may be the industry leader in greeting cards, but the company, which was founded in 1906, faces some steep competition when it comes to selling cards to the youths. Card makers are now competing with social media posts, text messages and E cards, which can be sent via email for free and on platforms like Etsy and Fiverr. There are thousands of independent card artists who can make and ship custom designs in a matter of days. A new Hallmark card, from start to finish, might take a year to hit the shelves. That's an eternity in today's creative economy, where trends live and die in a week.

[Mia Mercado]

We definitely did a lot of things that were trying to capitalize on Internet trends that then felt really dated by the time that they went out into the world. A lot of the things that are funny online are flash in the pan. So I don't know. Nobody's going to want to buy a card that has a Twitter joke on it from seven months ago.

[Zachary Crockett]

Sometimes industry veterans also have a blind spot when it comes to millennial humor. George White admits that at his company, there have been times when he didn't see the appeal of a card his younger colleagues pitched. One example sticks out in his mind.

[George White]

It was opossum in a trash can. And when you pulled the tab, a possum jumped out of the trash can and says, let's get trashed. And so I was like, I don't understand why you would send this to someone. And we have a lot of millennials and our creative staff, and they're like, this card's gonna do great. Trust us. And I did, and it's one of our best sellers. So, you know, I'm a young boomer. I would not send that to somebody, but they totally would.

[Zachary Crockett]

Possums in trash cans aside, the greeting card industry is involved in much more serious affairs. The Greeting Card association, which White previously oversaw, has played a surprisingly central role in the way our mail is delivered.

[George White]

Almost 60% of greeting cards are delivered to their final recipient by mail. If it costs over a dollar to mail one of my cards, then people start thinking when they see our cars in the store, eh, I don't want to spend a dollar to mail this. So it just becomes another part of the thought process.

[Zachary Crockett]

The Greeting Card association pushed for the creation of the Forever Stamp. That's a stamp that's always good for a regular letter or card, regardless of future price increases. The organization also testified before Congress to ensure that mail remains affordable.

[George White]

You know, we're talking about things like processing time and how the mail is sent around the country and how many workers there and union contracts. I mean, we get into all that, all that sort of exciting stuff with the Postal Service.

[Zachary Crockett]

Greeting cards can be a way to express your feelings, even if those feelings are just happy birthday or I'm thinking about you, or let's get trashed sending a card to say that might cost you $6. The store you bought it from probably paid half that much for it, and the company that created it made about 30 cents of profit.

[George White]

I think it's one of the best values in the economy today. On that day, in that moment, that person knows that I was thinking about them. That's pretty powerful, right?

[Zachary Crockett]

Mia Mercado has a more measured take.

[Mia Mercado]

Now that I've been out of homework for a few years, I'm a little more back in the real world of thinking of greeting cards. Like, I don't know how anyone else thinks of greeting cards, which is just like, I don't really think about GRE GRE greeting cards.

[Zachary Crockett]

For the economics of everyday things, I'm Zachary Crockett. This episode was produced by Sarah Lilly and mixed by Jeremy Johnston. We had help from Julie Kanfer and Daniel Moritz Rapson.

[Mia Mercado]

Like any creative thing, there's only so much science that you can put into it. There's only so far that a number can go before you're like, well, I think people just like this card because there's a cute puppy on it.

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