The corporate information site of the giant greeting card manufactuer Hallmark makes interesting reading.  There are the usual facts and figures about christmas cards which is mainly tailored torwards the US market, like how many billions of christmas cards are sent each year but the big message in the blurb seems to be a defensive one and probably tailored towards its shareholders.

It downplays the threat of the ecard as a replacement to the traditional christmas card and in my biased opinion (as defender of the christmas card tradition) makes some very worthwhile arguments. 

Hallmark cite that whilst technology helps people manage their lives it does’nt help them manage their relationships.  For businesses email is primarily a business function for sharing information quickly rather than for more personal communication.   They go on to say that :

“When it comes to letting others know how much they care, people still want to share a tangible expression of emotion, and that’s when they turn to greeting cards. Email and e-cards just can’t replace the greeting card, which people can display, read over and over again, and save for years to come.”

Hallmark even go on to say that they view ecards as a complement to the traditional christmas card.  This is because that as more and more people embrace email communication their network of customers and clients is greater than ever.  Strangely enough this can ultimately mean that they have more people to send the traditional christmas card to.

Here here.  Long live the corpoarte christmas card