• by Amy Corr , Staff Writer @MediaPostOTL, June 15, 2009

How would you react if your friend sent you a virtual greeting card that said: "I hope a sexy, exotic woman we smuggle across the Mexican border never gets it in the way of our friendship."

If you're an avid watcher of the Showtime series, "Weeds," you'll enjoy the reference. If you're a non-watcher, like me, you'll furrow your brow and wish you were in on the joke.

Popular e-card site SomeECards offers users unconventional online greeting cards for holidays, birthdays, graduations, weddings and anniversaries on timely topics ranging from swine flu to the recession.

The site launched its redesigned look today, which includes new features like scheduled card sends and card pickup notifications.

The site also houses a series of branded ecards that promote the fifth season of Showtime's  "Weeds," and the latest installment of We TV's  "Bridezillas."

The promotional ecards have the same snarky tone as those found on the site, only these cards are supporting online ad buys promoting their respective series. Publishing network In | Voices editorializes the shows by creating cards based on a brief from the client and its agency.

OMD and The Visionare Group handled media and creative work for Showtime and Mediastorm and Maude handled the Bridezillas media and creative.

Once the cards are created, the branded cards are placed on the Web site and promoted via Twitter and Facebook App. SomeECards has more than 683, 000 followers on Twitter and more than 300,000 Facebook users downloaded its app.

The "Weeds"-branded cards received an extra bump in popularity when Showtime posted them on its "Weeds" fan page on Facebook and hosted the cards on Sho.com.

The campaigns cost anywhere from $75K to $150k and clients, should they choose, can follow the number of people who "retweet" their sponsored cards on Twitter.

The site also launched a branded campaign today for "Away We Go," a movie starring Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski.

There's only one card uploaded to support the ad buy so far, but it's still funny:  "Let's promise to only gather child-rearing suggestions from our least insane friends and relatives."