May 21, 2012

4th Annual LOUIE Awards Rolls Out Consumer’s Choice Facebook Poll

The Greeting Card Association (GCA) is pleased to introduce the first-ever Consumer’s Choice LOUIE contest, taking place from May 21 – May 31, 2012 immediately following the Awards ceremony. This award will allow Facebook fans to choose their favorite LOUIE winner to be named the consumer favorite for the 2011/2012 LOUIEs, announced at the 2012/2013 Awards.

Beginning on May 21st, the day after the Awards, photos of all the winning cards will be posted on the LOUIE Awards Facebook page. Fans of the page will be invited to browse through all the cards and vote for their favorites by ‘liking’ the photo. The contest will run until the end of May, at which point the photo with the most ‘likes’ will be crowned Consumer’s Choice. The winner will be recognized next year at the 25th Annual LOUIE Awards. As this award is all about the consumer, one lucky voter chosen at random will receive a box of all the winning cards as a prize for taking part in the contest.

“The Consumer’s Choice contest came about because of a strategic endeavor to add to the value of what it means to be a LOUIE winner,” said LOUIE Awards Strategic Chair Andy Meehan. “The contest is just the first step in further involving the consumer, encouraging them to voice their opinion and become a part of the Awards so that when a card in a store is identified as a LOUIE winner, it will mean something special to the manufacturer, and to the person purchasing that card.”

To vote for your favorite card post-LOUIEs, please visit www.facebook.com/LouieAwards. For more information on the LOUIE Awards, please visit www.greetingcard.org.

About the LOUIE Awards: Officially known as the International Greeting Card Awards Competition, the LOUIEs are named after Louis Prang, the German-born Boston lithographer credited with the birth of the U.S. Christmas card in the 1870s. The LOUIEs celebrate the art, editorial and design of greeting cards and reinforce the relevance of creating, sending and receiving greeting cards. Launched by the Greeting Card Association in 1988, the prestigious LOUIE Awards recognize the most outstanding cards marketed in the U.S. during the previous calendar year. The competition is open to all domestic and foreign greeting card publishers and attracts hundreds of entries annually. In addition to Awards Chair Katy Greenspan of Cardstore.com, serving on the LOUIE Committee this year are Strategic Chair Andy Meehan of Development Solutions Global; Patti Stracher, show manager of the National Stationery Show® (NSS); and Monika Brandrup, creative director of Up With Paper and this year’s “shadow chair.” For more information, visit www.greetingcard.org, or find the LOUIEs on Facebook at www.facebook.com/LOUIEAwards, or on Twitter @LouieAwards.