The vacation season is Hallmark’s Tremendous Bowl.
This 12 months alone, Hallmark has 80 hours of unique holiday-themed programming, together with two unscripted collection, two scripted collection, a vacation particular and 24 motion pictures with titles akin to “The Snow Should Go On” and “Christmas on the Catnip Cafe” that run from mid-October to Christmas.
The corporate additionally has branched out into the experiences enterprise with a Hallmark Christmas Cruise and the Hallmark Christmas Expertise pageant in Kansas Metropolis, Mo., the place the corporate is predicated.
“I believe that’s one of the crucial good enterprise selections they’ve made, and so they’re increasing there as a result of they should,” Anjali Bal, affiliate professor of selling at Babson Faculty, mentioned of Hallmark’s experiences enterprise. “It permits a connection between the buyer and the model on a direct stage in a approach a film can’t present.”
It could seem to be a far cry from Hallmark’s roots as a greeting card purveyor, however firm executives say the vacation emotions evoked by its playing cards, ornaments and present wrap translate into the kind of content material they produce.
And that plethora of content material has turned Hallmark right into a Christmas juggernaut, fueling rivals akin to Lifetime and Netflix, which additionally produce vacation romantic comedies within the vein of Hallmark motion pictures.
However Darren Abbott, Hallmark’s chief model officer, doesn’t appear overly involved.
“There’s a purpose everybody else is attempting to do that, and it’s as a result of customers are on the lookout for this,” he mentioned.
Hallmark’s legacy is rooted in celebrating holidays and Christmas, he mentioned, “and no different enterprise or model has that.”
Countdown to Christmas
Based in 1910 by an 18-year-old entrepreneur hawking postcards, Hallmark constructed its model over time by means of playing cards, vacation ornaments and retail shops.
The family-owned enterprise ventured into leisure in 1951 with the tv presentation Hallmark Corridor of Fame. In the present day, Studio Metropolis-based Hallmark Media operates three cable networks, together with the Hallmark Channel, which debuted in 2001, in addition to a subscription streaming service.
Although Hallmark had aired vacation motion pictures virtually for the reason that inception of its cable channel, the corporate doubled down on the season in 2009, rolling out “Countdown to Christmas,” a 24-hour-a-day programming block centered solely on vacation content material, a convention that has lasted for 16 years.
Hallmark produces about 100 motion pictures a 12 months, each vacation and non-holiday movies.
As a privately-held firm, Hallmark didn’t disclose its funds, although executives acknowledge the vacation season is a key driver of leisure income.
The growth into leisure is a approach for Hallmark to remain within the zeitgeist over a number of generations and to diversify its enterprise past simply playing cards and retail merchandise, analysts mentioned.
“Their tv stations and experiences enterprise permits them to remain culturally related whereas staying true to their origin,” mentioned Bal, the advertising professor.
Vacation programming — and the breezy, romantic fare Hallmark has turn out to be recognized for — has turn out to be more and more common with audiences.
Vacation options, each previous motion pictures and new, sometimes make up greater than a 3rd of complete film viewing time in December, in line with U.S. tv information from Nielsen. That proportion has remained pretty constant for the final three years, although it reached 42% in December 2021.
Hallmark’s tv viewership additionally edges up within the months main into the vacations. In October, Hallmark commanded 1% of complete viewership throughout linear TV and streaming, ticking as much as 1.2% in November, in line with Nielsen information. Throughout that very same time, competitor A&E, which owns Lifetime, remained fixed at 0.9%.
Hallmark’s feel-good motion pictures sometimes resonate with audiences throughout the nation. They invariably conclude with joyful endings (and at the least one kiss), the place romantic misunderstandings, monetary difficulties and household drama all get resolved. After years of criticism, the films’ casts and plot strains are diversifying, although consultants say there’s nonetheless room for enchancment.
“These movies are designed to be extremely interesting to broad audiences,” mentioned Equipment Hughes, affiliate professor of movie and media research at Colorado State College, who watched each single Hallmark movie launched in 2022 for analysis on the portrayal of small enterprise homeowners. “They’re good consensus motion pictures.”
To develop its viewers and the sorts of tales it tells, Hallmark has more and more turned to model partnerships, together with with the NFL.
Final 12 months, the corporate launched a film centered round a Kansas Metropolis Chiefs romance; this 12 months, it launched one about Buffalo Payments followers. Hallmark additionally has a partnership with Walt Disney Co. to launch a vacation film subsequent 12 months set at Walt Disney World. The movie stars Lacey Chabert, who Abbott describes as Hallmark’s “Queen of Christmas.”
Assembly Hallmark stars on cruise ships
Hallmark’s foray into the cruise enterprise might sound odd, but it surely follows an extended custom of leisure corporations
creating real-world experiences with their followers, whether or not that’s on a ship, in a theme park or on a stage. As a part of its large tourism enterprise, Disney operates its personal line of cruise ships that promote the corporate’s traditional characters.
Hallmark launched its first “Hallmark Christmas Cruise” final 12 months on Norwegian Cruise Traces. The inaugural cruise from Miami to the Bahamas offered out even earlier than a deliberate TV advertising marketing campaign. After racking up a wait record of 70,000 folks, Hallmark had so as to add a second cruise, Abbott mentioned.
For this 12 months’s cruise, from Miami to Cozumel, Mexico, Hallmark needed to ebook an even bigger ship to accommodate demand. In the course of the November cruise, attendees participated in numerous Christmas festivities, akin to ornament-making workshops and cookie-decorating, and mingled with Hallmark stars in numerous on-stage video games.
The cruises even spawned an unscripted Hallmark present centered on the experiences of a number of attendees and their interactions with Hallmark actors.
Many are usually not precisely family names, however they’ve starred in dozens of Hallmark vacation motion pictures over time and have loyal fan bases.
Abbott joined the cruise final 12 months, and whereas he’s not a “cruise individual,” he mentioned he was fascinated to see how friends interacted with the celebrities.
“We’re a little bit of a respite from what’s happening on this planet proper now,” he mentioned, “and these experiences form of hit on that on the proper time and the appropriate place.”
