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cardsharp
Pigging Out “Are your greeting cards just bland fodder plucked from a drab shop display?” These are the words on a current Moonpig radio advert that Cardsharp has heard repeatedly on his beloved Planet Rock radio station and no doubt has gone out across the whole commercial radio network too. Appearing regularly on the station’s commercials loop this advert has driven Cardsharp to increasing levels of irritation. The most recent time he heard it, was just before the radio station played the Los Angeles glam metal heads, Mötley Crüe’s brilliant anthem, Shout at the Devil. How apposite thought Cardsharp, his heckles rising, feeling that as far as our greeting card industry is concerned, Moonpig felt like the devil. Cardsharp has mentioned his aversion to this distasteful campaign before, when it was first aired nine months ago. He hoped back then that was an ill-thought through aberration and gave the online platform the benefit of the doubt, that it was just an error of judgement from the marketing department. Obviously, Cardsharp was wrong, and this is part of a deliberate strategy. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. Now Cardsharp is aware that Moonpig’s greeting card sales (not necessarily the company’s sales overall which include gifts and other items) have declined since the end of the Covid crisis. And it would appear Moonpig is finding it increasingly expensive to attract new
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customers that will spend on its greeting cards. And having floated recently, the group is struggling to maintain, to what Cardsharp considers, a very overpriced share price. But in Cardsharp’s view, there is no excuse for this kind of dirty marketing tactics. Think about it. Moonpig is slating virtually all of Progressive Greetings’ readers. Every bricks and mortar retail outlet is being labelled as having a ‘drab
Top: Cardsharp is less happy than these piggies look. Above: Some positive billboard advertising from Moonpig last year when it introduced its new mascot. Below: Heavy rock legends Mötley Crüe’s Shout to the Devil struck a chord with Cardsharp.
shop display’ and every publisher is offering ‘bland fodder’ on those racks. Cardsharp is no dinosaur and has long recognised the merit in Moonpig. As the market leader in the online print on demand space, it has historically flown the flag for sending greeting cards, its marketing as well as continuous onboarding of new publishers and designs has helped to keep the greeting card sending habit fresh, and so has been a positive for the greeting card industry. Now though, in the light of this campaign, Cardsharp finds his view has changed somewhat. Think about it. The tack taken on the advert insults and denigrates every retailer of greeting cards in the UK. It also insults and degrades every publisher in the UK. And every artist, designer, wholesaler, printer and supplier that make our greeting card sector special. Frankly to Cardsharp’s mind, it stinks. Cardsharp recognises that some publishers, reading this may be in a pretty invidious position. Licensing royalties to publishers from Moonpig can be pretty significant, and in these tough economic times, they are not to be sniffed at. And publishing suppliers to Moonpig may rationalise this by thinking that this is not much different to the brokerage model, where smaller publishers in effect supply their main competitors which is a weird conflict of interest. But as Cardsharp notes, brokers