Senior Grant Johnston will be interning with Hallmark from May 22-23 to work on the development of a new Hallmark product after winning the first Hallmark Storytelling Challenge earlier in the year.
The idea for the Hallmark Storytelling Challenge began during a casual conversation about product development at a reception, journalism professor Charles Davis said. MU has a long-time relationship with Hallmark, and the university decided to give students the opportunity use their creativity to inspire a Hallmark product, Davis said.
Students of all disciplines were given the prompt: “What can be given (gifted, passed on, or paid forward) over and over again, leaves a piece of itself (an impression, tag, memory…) behind, but never gets smaller?”
The School of Journalism received more than 50 submissions and sent them to Hallmark for judging, Davis said.
Johnston’s winning story was titled “The Smile.”
“It’s about a little girl who has a very distinct smile, that happens to be contagious and gives all things that surround her that very same smile or causes them to smile themselves,” Johnston said. “It is told through the setting of a forest with animals. So she is the only human in the story, and there is no description of how she got there. It just kind of starts with her wandering, like a little kid does, adventure.”
The inspiration for “The Smile” came from the prompt itself and the desire to write about something creative and intangible, Johnston said.
He also said his winning piece was more “Hallmark-appropriate” than what he normally writes.
“This was way more lighthearted than what I usually write,” Johnston said.
Before “The Smile,” Johnston had never written a children’s story, but he said he’s always enjoyed creative writing.
“I like writing poetry and rhyming,” Johnston said. “I was just bored once last semester, and I got the flyer from the J-school and decided ‘I might as well.’”
As a reward for his story’s selection, Johnston will be staying at Hallmark’s corporate headquarters in Kansas City, Mo., while he interns.
Johnston said he doesn’t know exactly what he is going to do during his trip to Hallmark.
“I’m going to start working with some of their creative people to … develop the ‘Smile’ concept,” Johnston said. “I’m not sure if they’re trying to literally make it into something – I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to be pushy.”
The complete nature of the project is relatively unknown, but the product is based off the idea of a family heirloom, Davis said.
“I’m really not sure where they’re going with it yet,” Davis said. “They might not be really sure where they are going with it yet. It is a very organic process at Hallmark, and (it’s) really interesting to watch how their brains cook.”
Johnston is only scheduled to be at Hallmark for two days, but if necessary they could enter into a contractual relationship after that, Davis said.
“I’m just excited to go,” Johnston said. “It sounds like a vacation, the way they describe it.”
