Brook Lundy is the co-founder of the insanely successful online greeting card service known as Someecards™. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year or so, you know exactly what brand of acerbically hilarious humour is embedded in each one of these cards, which take a traditional looking greeting card and warp it into something deliciously caustic and fresh. Lundy co-founded Someecards™ with his art director partner, Duncan Mitchell, when the two were working at different creative agencies. In an interview with The Huffington Post, Lundy describes first writing to Mitchell about idea in an email which opened with the words: “[This is] the lamest idea I’ve ever pitched you.” That lame pitch turned out to be one of the biggest smash hits the web has seen in a long time. The following is an excerpt from the interview:
BROOK: Well, I started someecards.com with my art director partner, Duncan Mitchell, from Tribal DDB. We were at different agencies and I approached him with what I pitched as “the lamest idea I’ve ever pitched you.” He was immediately sold on it and we were texting potential names for “a funny ecard site” on the way home from dinner.
HUFFPO: So how did you decide on that name? The double “e” makes it a tad tricky. Unless you know something from an ad-person’s perspective that makes it extra-sticky?
BROOK: Everything we do has the illusion of seeming extremely simple and lazy. The fact is, we probably spent 2 months trying to get the name right. Naming something is brutal. All the URLs are taken, for one. And then once you fall in love with a name, you mention it to one smart friend and they look at you like you’ve just trickled vomit out of your mouth.
HUFFPO: So – why that name, since we’re on it? It’s certainly worked. Everyone loves them some-e-cards! Even if they aren’t sure how to punctuate.
BROOK: Right. It seems to have worked. People lost interest in trying to figure out the pronunciation and spelling. Of course, once the site was doing well and we were ready to leave our jobs, one thing every investor said to us was, “So…about the name? How attached are you guys to that?”
HUFFPO: HA. I guess you were attached.
BROOK: We went back to the drawing board and went as equally insane as we did the first time. Finally, my friend Nancy said, “You can’t change the name unless you have one that’s better.” Which helped solve the problem because we had lots that were much, much worse. The investors were sold on the name having some brand recognition at that point so we kept it.
HUFFPO: When did all this happen?
BROOK: End of last year.
HUFFPO: And have you started making money yet?
BROOK: We’re making money, yes. But the Internet money truck hasn’t pulled up to our doors yet. Ideally, we’d actually just like to make this a successful business and just keep doing it because we love it. We’re not totally just looking for a zillion dollars. Unless you know someone with a zillion dollars who likes the site.
You can read the full interview by visiting TheHuffingtonPost.com. And for your daily fix from the world of Someecards™ be sure to visit Someecards.com, follow them on Facebook and Twitter, visit the Someecards Store, and get the Someecards™ app for iPhone and Android.
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