Classy Cards plies novel marketing ploy at National Stationery Show

Classy Cards' Cassy Collins and Alex Morash at NSS

Classy Cards’ “idea man/card slinger” Alex Morash was pleased when a visitor to his exhibition booth last week at the National Stationery Show (NSS) at New York’s Javits Center dropped by after picking up a “Hey Good Lookin’, Come visit us—We’re f**king awesome! We promise you won’t regret it!” card--strategically placed atop a men’s room urinal.

“I’m an electrician by trade, but I do use the bathroom frequently!” he explained of his successful “gurerilla marketing” ploy.

Meanwhile, his wife and Classy Cards’ designer/owner Cassy Collins explained how the three-year-old boutique greeting cards company, which is based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, works: “I feed my husband alcohol, and he comes up with the content!”

Morash’s sayings are then printed on all kinds of greeting cards as well as notepads, notebooks, wine labels and magnets, with the “Maybe swearing will help” magnet giving a good idea of the lines’ overall irreverent and often risqué character. This was further evidenced by the birthday cards “Happy f**king birthday” and (beneath a cupcake with one lit candle standing) “Blow me,” not to mention the notebook covers “People I want to punch in the face...f**k people are stupid” (its best-seller) and “S**t to remember...because it’s easy to forget s**t.”

And in keeping with Collins’ motivational methodology, there are those wine labels, “Let’s drink wine and judge people” providing a representative example.

“So you can take the label off a bottle of cheap wine and pretend it’s expensive,” suggests Collins, whose company is definitely a mom-and-pop operation: Her and Morash’s little boy Lennon Morash holds the company title of inspiration/troublemaker.