Hey Lesbians: Hallmark (Think They) Have You Covered for Mother’s Day!
Failing to cash-in, Hallmark inclusivity-flops.
Searching for a Mother’s Day card for her wife, a lesbian friend complained that she was unable to find a single card that didn’t say something like ‘from your loving husband’ or have a picture of a besotted dude on it.
Out of curiosity I did a google and — what do you know! — a link to ‘www.hallmark.com/lgbtqia’ popped.
Wow! OK. Maybe…
Now I’m not a fan of the Big H (or cards in general, frankly), but I thought —
‘Hey, maybe they’re on it after all. Paint me gobsmacked. Intelligent capitalism for the win!’
(‘Hmmm…so let’s see what they’ve put together…’)
Yea, there were exactly two ‘LGBTQIA’ mother’s day cards.
Two.
Huh.
And, of course, nothing for children of mothers.
I went over and looked at their straight-people stock, and yep, Hallmark features 805 different Mother’s Day card designs, 84 of them specifically for besotted husbands to bestow on their doting wives.
Something ain’t right here…
Let’s help poor Hallmark out by doing a little Market Research 101 for them, shall we?
It just so happens that I had to research population numbers for an upcoming feature, so I can tell you that recent surveys show the LGBT+ fraction of the general population ranging anywhere from 4% to 12%; and as high as 20% amongst the younger crowd. The actual count is likely to be toward the high end (yea, stigmatised people don’t much like to out themselves on polls), but let’s be conservative and take the median of the available numbers:
These suggest that 8% of the population — and 8% of parents — are LGBT+.
Assuming that roughly half of parents are likely to be mothers (I know that’s a reach, but let’s simplify), arithmetic says that proportionally Hallmark should be offering seven non-straight-couple Mother’s Day cards.
Sure, 7 isn’t a lot, but it’s 350% more than 2.
Actually, a menu of 3 items is kind of a minimum for ‘offering choice’, as any first-year marketing student will tell you. No one does retail business offering two things. Duh.
So no, whatever their webpage banner says, Hallmark are not catering to ‘LGBTQIA’. At all. They’ve made a token gesture, and it is superficial inclusivity politics, not basic economics. They are not savvy enough to realise that offering a choice of two is not going to sell things. Or they don’t care.
Hallmark have done the token thing; and given the cost of the website coding and print-run set-up they will (obviously) lose money on their ‘LGBTQIA offering’. Their failure at basic marketing will guarantee that, behind the scenes, they will conclude that LGBT+ is not a viable market.
Yes, Hallmark think they’ve got the whole LGBTQIA thing covered. They don’t.
They’re not going to sell any Mother’s Day cards to lesbians. I mean, good grief, don’t they know the basics of their own business? Why do they offer over 800 Mother’s Day cards in the first place, if two will do?
They probably don’t even know they’re leaving money on the table. So much for ‘efficient markets’.
And they clearly don’t know that their limp gesture toward ‘inclusivity’ is, at best, frustrating to the non-straight customer and, at worst, offensive.
(Oh yes, I have been spending way too much time tunnelling through LGBT population studies this week. Look for my feature story Trans Women and the Police, coming out in them. magazine later this month.)
Allison Washington is a Cairo-based journalist and essayist on LGBT+ and women’s issues. Find her bio and reader guide at AllisonWashington.net.
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