Holiday Scented Card Essay

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Holiday-Scented Cards Amidst the shy smiles, the aura of special occasions, and the colorful Hallmark cards there lie bolder hints of how meticulously companies advertise. Appealing commercial storylines must inspire like big-screen movies through different means to engage the audience all while promoting a product, which is, after all, their fundamental purpose. To achieve this, a series of special-occasions-oriented Hallmark commercials use Igor Kopytoff’s theory of “Singularization,” by dressing, quite forcefully, the product with the universally-appreciated attributes, and placement of special occasions, and their rituals. According to Kopytoff, commodities can be everything from people, buildings, to objects. An object is commoditized, Kopytoff explains, strictly during the moment of transaction, such as when a Hallmark card is bought, and it continues to be a commodity afterwards, “unless formally decommoditized,” distinguishing it …show more content…

Hallmark takes advantage of the abundance of effusive familial relations in special occasions. Families often get together during holidays. Hallmark’s 2010 Illiterate Father's Day Commercial tells the errand of an illiterate father as he learns to finally read his Father’s Day Hallmark cards. Since the cards connect him to his daughter, they become the end goal of his endeavor. The newly-literate father sits alone in his room, smiling satisfied with the new knowledge he has acquired. He directly decides to take out and read his Hallmark cards. Hallmark makes the cards his reason for learning, singularizing them as a motive for self-building, almost like a religion, as well as connecting families together, like religious holidays. Hallmark lets the idea of their cards being holy resonate, moving them further away from being simply monetarily-valued commodities, and placing them as high as holidays

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