Emoticons from Hallmark?

I was sitting next to a Hallmark person during lunch. The discussion was around the trends in traditional greeting cards vs e-greeting cards. E-greetings are winning steadily, although the situation is not as serious as analog vs digital cameras. Yet.

I gave a simple idea to him. Hallmark should create a branded range of emoticons and have it bundled with MSN messenger etc.

Hallmark is in the business of helping you express yourself. More and more youngsters are expressing themselves through sms, messenger etc (I can take an educated guess that amongst teens, 10% of the conversation is what would have required a "card" earlier). Hallmark should be in that market.

It's true that one can download emoticons from the web. But, here (a) Hallmark can leverage its brand to package, consolidate and dominate this market, and (b) It can create out of world emoticons because it knows more about feelings and expressions than anyone else.Hallmark has no choice but to dominate the e-greeting space; otherwise it'll vanish one day. This should be a small step in keeping itself relevant for the webby boomers.