User-friendly greeting card kiosks, licenses lure shoppers

Discount Store News, Sept 4, 1995

NATIONWIDE DSN REPORT -- Believe it or not, licensing has found a new, unexploited discount store avenue to penetrate: products generated by greeting card kiosks.

These licenses, coupled with improved software packages, should enhance sales and the popularity of personalized creations. While standing at a kiosk, such as a CreataCard computer from American Greetings or Touch-Screen Greetings by Ambassador/Hallmark, card-making customers will now have the option of incorporating a loved one's name into a Pocahontas card or into a headline from the supermarket tabloid The National Enquirer.

"We're having a great deal of success with National Football League and Nickelodeon licensed product [on the kiosks], said John Klipfell, CreataCard president and senior vp, electronic marketing for AG.

Some of the latest options available on AG's software (which has just shipped to about 20% of its 10,000 CreataCard machines so far) are licensed personalities from TV game shows "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy."

Due out over the next several months are NBA, Opus and Bill cartoon characters, Batman and Superman, plus youth-oriented TV dramas "90210" and "Melrose Place," Klipfell said. Before the end of the year, Marvel Comics and "The Tonight Show" licenses should be available for card-making purposes.

If the licenses seem targeted to a younger, more trend-oriented shopper than core greeting card customers--women in their mid-40s, who buy the most cards, AG research suggests--that's for a reason. Ambassador/Hallmark and AG have discovered that somewhere between 30% and 40% of the kiosk users are male. A large percentage of the users are in their 20s.

"The kiosks are attracting a different customer base that's not particularly attuned to greeting cards," Klipfell said. "That's an opportunity for us to introduce a new customer to our business and an opportunity for retailers, who are desperately trying to track this age segment, to build buyer loyalty."

Letting consumers know of the wealth of licensed product available inside the box is a challenge. AG has adjusted the on-screen "menu" approach by adding blinking icons onto the software so that browsers are alerted to the highly recognized characters available through CreataCard.

Ambassador/Hallmark will be placing on-screen graphics, in-store signs and samples of licensed cards above the machines (in enclosed display areas) to promote its skus. Pocahontas, Looney Tunes and Ziggy are licenses that Touch-Screen has recently presented.

The preview method in kiosks has been updated over the past year. AG has invested in new software changes that have sped up the browsing process, which tends to take several seconds to advance from one on-screen card to another.

AG has introduced other uses for the machine, including nearly 100 different invitations for the same price of a card, $3.95. Next month, framed keepsakes and certificates will be offered for the same price.

Price is a key subject for the kiosk industry. AG pumped up its price from $3.50 to $3.95 in June, after test marketing the change.

Taking the opposite route, Ambassador/Hallmark dropped the price of its cards on Aug. 1 from $3.50 to $2.95, as a competitive weapon and to push product faster. Hallmark said that by early'96 it will remove 1,200 of its 2,700 Touch-Screen Greetings boxes from retail stores. "Hallmark wanted to be sure that any inch of retail space we consume is really performing. If we find that a product isn't performing as well as another could, we cut it back," said spokeswoman Mindi Ellis.

Sangamon, on the other hand, is reportedly poised to debut its greeting card kiosk program. Further details were unavailable.

In order to spread acceptance of kiosks, CreataCard will launch a national FSI (free standing insert) in newspapers in an effort to tell 50 million to 60 million readers about contests and promos that tie into kiosks, product and the stores.

CreataCard has also added POP displays to the tops of its machines, urging shoppers to give the kiosk a try. For some consumers, the high-tech features of the kiosk are intimidating. In order to minimize this, AG has installed demonstration videos on the kiosk monitors.

For shoppers who are comfortable with technology, Hallmark has teamed up with Micrografx to develop software--called Hallmark Connections Card Studio--that will enable PC users to create cards on their desktops. With America Online, PC users can order and mail personalized greeting cards for $2.95 plus postage. And AG has just signed with MSN, the Microsoft Network. Greeting cards will come later this fall, but postcards, icon stamps for Email and "chatter box" with guest hosts from AG's design team are a few of the products and services available now.