Thoughts on Business Cards
August 27th, 2008 by Jeb Foster
Here is the distilled conventional wisdom as applied to business cards: Keep it boring, because boring is professional.
Here is the unconventional wisdom: Boring is … simply boring. Not professional. Not safe. Just boring.
“A good business card starts a conversation,” says Robert Scoble, formerly of Microsoft.
My last ones at Microsoft, for instance, were imprinted with my info in braille. Now, I’ve actually handed my card to one person who was blind, but I found that always started a conversation when I handed my card to someone. Why? It felt different than any other card. Out of the 1,011 cards, by the way only two were imprinted in Braille (both were from Microsoft which offers that as an option on business cards). Another way to start a conversation? Make your card feel different. One of mine were made out of a rubbery material. I remember that made so much of an impression on people that some asked for two so they could show their boss.
By Scoble’s metric, in which a good card starts a conversation, most business cards fail miserably. (InsureMe is no exception–our current graphic designers would like nothing more than to incinerate every single featureless card.)
My guess is that most cards fail because they’re seen as having low value. After all, it’s just a little piece of card stock that gets handed out and then either filed in some drawer or turned into pocket lint in the washing machine, right?
Well, that may be the case if your card stinks. But if you see it as having value and you put some effort into making a one that’s above average, your card will float to the top of the pile.
