Selling Strong Emotions

By John Leo

Snuggled in there on the racks among HUMOROUS NEPHEW and FOREIGN BIRTHDAY are cards with messages such as "The warmth of your hug lingers . . ." and "In this world it's very scary to be open and vulnerable . . ." and "Finally, I have a friend I can trust . . . completely!" So far the genre has no name -- call it the emotionally expressive component of the nonoccasion card market. But under such brand names as Soft Sentiments and Personal Touch, cards retailing love, heartache and other real-life, prepackaged emotions are among the hottest products in the industry. "The style today is openness and honesty," says Larry Barnett, founder of Carolyn Bean, a San Francisco card company. Barnett says he has seen women buying emotional cards in bunches, building "a library of sentiments." Says Neil Robinson, a young Washington writer and law student: "Cards have become a part of modern courtship and friendship."

In the feelings cards, pastels and calligraphy are popular, and rhyming is considered gauche. Carolyn Bean features wistful, somber messages: "Occasionally, like now, I get so blue . . ." and "As I get older, I truly appreciate the depth of your commitment to me." Russ Berrie cards of Oakland, N.J., stress quiet optimism: "Things have a way of working out" and "Where you've been . . . doesn't matter," a heartwarming message in the age of herpes and AIDS.

American Greetings' In Touch line has the bluntest, quirkiest of the cards, including a sincere but somewhat wimpy message from a jilted lover ("Everyone tells me I'll get over it . . . but how could they ever begin to know how much I loved you?"), a modified zinger to get a friend to back off ("I want to please you, but first I have to please myself"), and a cryptic note aimed at intimates who apparently intend to conduct the rest of their relationship over the phone ("More than anything, it's the eye contact I'll miss").

All 144 In Touch cards, published last month in a 55 million-card first printing, were written by David Viscott, a radio therapist and author (The Making of a Psychiatrist). "This is really America in therapy," he says, "people trying to get themselves together and be whole." Like many other writers of emotional cards, Viscott sometimes seems to be cannibalizing old song lyrics and old movie scripts ("Nobody does it better"; "No matter what happens, we always have us"), but he is willing to tackle unusual subjects like insecurity in the office. One such message -- "Your efficiency sometimes scares the hell out of me, but I appreciate, value and need you" -- was inspired by Viscott's supercompetent assistant. Says he: "She's so efficient, I thought, 'What does she need me for?' and I wrote this card."

Grief got Viscott into the card-writing game. When his first marriage was breaking up, he found himself trudging sadly along a Cape Cod beach, jotting down notes about some of his jumbled feelings. Later he showed them to his business partner, who said excitedly, "You know what you have here? These are greeting-card messages!" Viscott launched a card company, then signed on with American Greetings when the business failed. Says Viscott: "Once I heard a voice saying 'Someday you will tell people what they really feel inside,' and that's what I do."

Viscott is an established luminary in high-emotion cards, but the reigning star is Susan Polis Schutz. Along with her husband Stephen, Schutz moved from New Jersey to a mountain retreat in Colorado in 1969, caught the end of the hippie movement and began writing poems on nature and relationships, using the personal-growth jargon of the human-potential movement. "We had no intention of building a card company," she says. "We were simply writing and creating to fulfill our own needs." Despite that intention, the Schutzes started Blue Mountain Arts, which they say has sold more than 200 million cards with Susan's poetry. The poems, often a hundred words or more in length, include such thoughts as "Not only did you bring back my belief in dreams but you are even more wonderful than my dreams." Blue Mountain Arts currently has the best-selling cards in the U.S., and the Schutzes and their staff sort through 50,000 poems and bits of sentiment each year seeking fresh material. Says Susan: "We never create a card line; we create real feelings."

Ronnie Sellers of Renaissance Greeting Cards charges that the giants of the business like Hallmark and American Greetings are clumping in late to co-opt a market developed by small companies. Hallmark has several entries in the field, including Personal Touch, featuring long Schutz-like poems, and Moment by Moment, with emotional telegrams that seem aimed at the yuppie market: "Alone . . . I pursue my life efficiently -- accomplishing everything I need to do . . . With you . . . I slowly savor every moment . . ."

Some industry researchers are convinced that millions of Americans want the card companies, like John Alden, to speak their deepest emotions for them. Susan Schutz thinks that this is the cards' strong point: "They free the inhibition because someone else is expressing the feelings for you." It may be that the card companies are busy establishing the emotional range for many Americans with one-size-fits-all feelings. But Psychologist R. Chris Martin of the University of Missouri, Kansas City, thinks the opposite is true. The cards, he says, show that "people are getting more sophisticated emotionally about distinguishing different feelings and emotions." The next step may be to let it all hang out. Viscott's update of In Touch cards for 1987 will include a few frankly angry messages. Example: "You hurt me. I feel better just telling you."

With reporting by Val Castronovo/New York and Elizabeth Taylor/ Chicago