{"id":347410,"date":"2025-12-14T01:37:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T01:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/347410\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T01:37:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T01:37:18","slug":"hallmark-medias-plan-to-make-fans-feel-like-theyre-part-of-the-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/347410\/","title":{"rendered":"Hallmark Media’s Plan to Make Fans Feel Like They’re Part of the Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen Hallmark<\/a> was founded 115 years ago, it was purely in the card business. Now, of course, Hallmark is the giant of the space, with cards for every holiday or life event you can imagine.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe company expanded into entertainment in the mid-to-late 1990s, first with Hallmark Entertainment, and later with Hallmark Channel, bringing its ethos to an entirely new line of business.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the company has, quietly, leveraged that media business into what Hallmark chief brand officer Darren Abbott describes as something of a third pillar: Experiences.<\/p>\n

\n\tHallmark is now in the cruise business, filling mega-boat with its stars, with waitlists in the tens of thousands. It turned its Kansas City headquarters into a Christmas experience with musical performances, shops and tee lightings. And there is more to come, leveraging the heartwearming and family-friendly things that define Hallmark the brand with the familiar faces of Hallmark the media company.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve been on a bit of a journey over the last couple years to really connect those two business units [cards and media] together,aAnd one of the things that we got to thinking about was this intersection of the fandom around all of this,\u201d Abbott says. \u201cWhat could we do to create, essentially, an experiences business around that, to move from making things and making movies to a third leg of the stool, which is the experiences. And that\u2019s actually how we think about the business right now, it\u2019s about product, it\u2019s about content and it\u2019s about experiences, and that\u2019s how we\u2019re sort of defining the three aspects of the brand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNot all brands have permission, if you will, from their audience or from their consumers, to get into this space,\u201d he adds. \u201cBut I think because Hallmark has always been a storytelling brand, it makes sense for us to bring these stories to life in real life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNikki DeLoach knows a thing or two about that. The actress has starred in dozens of projects for Hallmark Channel, but in 2019 the company hosted what it called a \u201cChristmas Convention,\u201d an event where Hallmark Channel fans could meet many of the stars of their movies.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI had never done a convention, most of us had never done one, we certainly hadn\u2019t done a Christmas convention\u201d DeLoach recalls. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know what to expect, and I will never forget stepping out onto that floor and seeing the thousands of fans cheering and so excited, and we listened to their stories one by one about how our movies got them through cancer treatments, loss, grief, divorce, heartache, all of these things. There was this moment where I kind of realized, \u2018wow, we need to be doing this more.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHallmark took that cue.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2024 it debuted its next major push into experiences, with its first ever Hallmark-branded cruise, and the Hallmark Christmas Experience in the Crown Center in Kansas City. Both experiences were built around letting Hallmark fans live and breath Hallmark, with plenty of familiar talent, games, shopping, and other elements.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think there\u2019s a component here where we have this great family of actors and talent that we use over and over again in our movies, and we\u2019ve heard from our consumers, we\u2019ve heard from the audience, they would love to experience the movies in real life,\u201d Abbott says. \u201cThat\u2019s where the genesis of most of this came from, and I think we\u2019re really just getting started in this space.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 2024 cruise sold out almost instantly, with tens of thousands of people putting their names on the waitlist. The 2025 cruise doubled in size, with DeLoach noting that they also ramped up the programming on the boat, which sailed from Miami to Cozumel last month, with shows, comedy, shopping and other activations.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis year we did something very different, which was we had an actual variety show on the boat, so full performances, choreography, harmonies, all of it,\u201d DeLoach says. \u201cEvery single year, whatever it is that we do, we aim to do something different and bring more to our fans.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI will say I have worked for MTV, ABC, FOX, CBS, I\u2019ve worked for all of these different networks,\u201d she added. \u201cI\u2019ve never experienced anything like it, the connection, the unique opportunity that we specifically get to have with our fans.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tHallmark Media now hosts the \u201cHallmark Christmas Experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tHallmark Media \/ photographer Matt Hoover<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Christmas event in Kansas City, similarly, let\u2019s visitors immerse themselves in a scene straight out of a Hallmark movie.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou get to walk around, there\u2019s tons of vendors, there\u2019s gonna be thousands of people there over the course of four different weekends, there\u2019s tree lightings,\u201d says Benjamim Ayres, a Hallmark movie veteran who hosted a TV special featuring performances and content from the event. \u201cFor those that maybe can\u2019t do the cruise \u2026 it allows for them to have the opportunity to see us and come together and understand the brand even on a deeper level.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHallmark has spun up something of a flywheel, leveraging its TV and movie talent for live events, and creating original programming from those events. That includes the Christmas special from Kansas City, but also a docuseries about the cruise. And it has brought many of its TV sponsors along for the ride, with brands signing on to sponsor the tree lighting in Kansas City, or the game show on the cruise.<\/p>\n

\n\tAbbott likens Hallmark\u2019s stable of talent to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with familiar faces that return every year.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe kind of have Hallmark\u2019s version of that with our talent, and you\u2019re going to see us continue to leverage that, not just in the experiences, but even as we think about content beyond the movies that we\u2019re so well known for, scripted series, some of the other initiatives we\u2019re getting into, the talent\u2019s coming along with us every step of the way,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s about access and a personal touch that is unusual for a media company.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe had a Zoom with the team the other night, because we\u2019re still building [the TV special] out. And, you know, one of the things I said was that it\u2019s just such a special thing that people continue to allow us into their living rooms,\u201d Ayres says. \u201cAnd I want to approach this in a way that we\u2019re going to invite them into ours.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Hallmark is still in the early days of its experiences buildout. The company has been experimenting in recent months, hosting events at its Hallmark stores across the country (including bringing talent to stores in Nashville and Buffalo, themes around programming).<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd the company is eager to bring the model outside of the holiday season as well, betting that it will work across the calendar.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are talking and in fairly advanced planning stages of creating experiences at other times of the year,\u201d Abbott says. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a new event that we\u2019re working on called Stars on Tour that will be like an auditorium tour that will go around the country and bring a small piece of what we do at the Christmas Experience or on the cruise to other cities. We\u2019re going to test that summer of \u201926 and then some other things we\u2019re doing is really zeroing in on specific aspects or activations at Christmas Experience, and how do you scale those and maybe take those to other areas as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Hallmark was founded 115 years ago, it was purely in the card business. Now, of course, Hallmark…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[88,46109,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-347410","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-hallmark","10":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}