ADWEEK

Is Success in the Cards for Vidigreet?

Kamau High

Video greeting cards? Vidigreet wants to make them as ubiquitous as static electronic cards that play tunes when opened.

The Hollywood, Calif.-based company is offering subscriptions to a service that lets consumers send funny, often ribald video greeting cards to their friends and enemies. The most popular, called "Touchscreen Sexy Girl," features a hot women who hurls insults at users.

Founded by Jeff Gorman last year, the company has about 10 employees. In beta since October, on Tuesday the site went live to the general public. It officially launches on Feb. 15, the day after Valentine's Day. The strategy, Gorman said, is to emphasize that vidigreet.com doesn't play by the traditional greeting-card rules.

Before starting the site, he was a commercial director with several Super Bowl spots to his credit, most recently a 2006 ad starring Leonard Nimoy for Aleve. He previously ran his own production company, Johns & Gorman. Prior to that, he was a copywriter and cd at Chiat\Day in the 1980s, working on accounts such as Nike and Pioneer Electronics.

Gorman directed most of the 400 videos on Vidigreet. Clips range in length from 15 seconds to two minutes.

Vidigreet joins sites such as sayitbaby.com, coolbuddy.com and guycon.com in the video greeting card market.

Vidigreet is currently using Google's Adsense and word of mouth to spread its message. The company will have an ice cream truck outfitted with TV screens playing videos at upcoming events such as "South by Southwest" in March.

Gorman is exploring non-subscription models such as product placement, sponsorship and banner ads.

"I expect to make money by subscriptions the way the other subscription based e-cards do. There's always the possibility that we will have an advertising component," said Gorman. "I think it's ideal for product placement. If an advertiser wants to subtly work in a can of coke or what have you it would be easy to do."