With social media making sending birthday greetings as easy as keying in a few characters and pressing SEND, what’s a greeting card company like Hallmark to do?

Hallmark — known for its positive, straight-arrow story-telling approach to marketing — took a bold shot at curbing the tide and reclaiming “Happy Birthday.”

Hallmark twisted its straight-arrow in a sharply humorous campaign to poke fun of those lackadaisical people who don’t send a card. In contemporary vernacular instead of Hallmark-verse, it’s a “fail.”

Hallmark’s #birthdayfail mounted social media itself to promote tangible card sending, highlighting the pitfalls that can happen when you don’t send a Hallmark card to those closest to you. At the core of the campaign was an improbable partnership with two cast members of the phenomenally popular reality TV comedy “Duck Dynasty” about a Louisiana family that makes duck calls at their company, Duck Commander. The two appeared in a series of #birthdayfail videos — written and produced for optimal backwoods-and-brilliant humour — that were promoted with paid integrations, video pre-rolls, media outreach, Twitter competitions and in-store screen displays in 700+ Walmarts. Along with videos, social graphics and text content were created and posted on Hallmark’s Facebook page.

With outstanding video click-through, social and earned media placement metrics and consumer engagement, the #birthdayfail campaign helped Hallmark achieve a meaningful increase in birthday card sales in only three short months and changed mindsets about card sending. This was the first time a PR-led campaign helped drive such sales success.

Through Hallmark’s Facebook page and Twitter account and Walmart’s Hallmark microsite (connectionsfromhallmark.com), the campaign pushed out a steady drumbeat of #birthdayfail videos, social graphics and text content.

Paid blogger integrations and outreach, traditional media outreach and a multimedia news release promoted the content, which was fuelled by a listen-and-respond effort to find organic consumer conversation around #birthdayfails. Twitter competitions kept conversations going.

The engine was four videos with high-share quotients featuring Jase and Si Robertson — in their hilarious back-country banter — talking about birthday fails. Both Jase and Si shared the videos on their own Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. Based on the enormous success of the first video (which received more than 100,000 views in the first 24 hours), Hallmark decided to put paid media support behind the videos as well — using them in digital pre-roll, promoted Facebook posts and in 700+ in-store screens in Walmarts nationwide.

Hallmark is a privately owned company and does not disclose specific sales numbers, but reports the campaign helped achieve a meaningful increase in birthday card sales in only three months and changed mindsets. This was the first time a PR-led Hallmark campaign helped drive such sales success.

The films videos performed above benchmark view-completion rates in paid media, delivering a high click-through rate above 4 percent in Facebook ad spaces. This is eight times the click-through rate of previous Hallmark greeting videos.

The campaign generated:

• 379,242 views

• 78,115 likes

• 10,000 shares

• 3,631 comments

• 4,000 placements

• 48.5 million impressions

The power of the branded content campaign led Hallmark to put paid support behind the concept as well — eventually using the videos in digital pre-roll, promoted Facebook posts and in 700+ in-store screens in Walmarts nationwide.