When you care enough to send the very best!

When you care enough to send the very best! is best known not as a literary aphorism but as a mid‑20th‑century advertising slogan associated with Hallmark greeting cards. It appeared in Hallmark’s national marketing as a way to position its cards as premium, emotionally sincere messages—something chosen when the sender wants to convey special care rather than merely fulfill a social obligation. Because it functioned as a corporate tagline repeated across print and broadcast advertising, it is often misattributed to “Anonymous” in quotation collections, even though its origin lies in commercial copywriting rather than a named authorial text.

The line equates “care” with selection of the “very best,” implying that emotional sincerity is demonstrated through the quality of the object sent. As a slogan, it compresses a social truth—people use gifts and cards to signal attention and affection—into a consumer directive: buy the premium option to express genuine feeling. Its enduring memorability comes from its cadence and its moral framing of consumption, subtly turning a purchase into evidence of devotion. Read critically, it also reveals how advertising borrows the language of love and duty to create a standard of care that can be measured (and sold) as product quality.

When you care enough to send the very best. (common punctuation variant)
When you care enough to send the very best… (ellipsis variant used in some ad copy)
When you care enough to send the very best—Hallmark. (tagline with brand appended)