Concerning ye olde standard business cards, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. For instance, some people have taken to handing out little mini-CDs! These “cards” are generally rectangular, except with the two shorter sides being round (almost quarter-circular, in fact) to facilitate spinning in a drive. One side is preprinted to look just like any normal business card, with the company name and so forth. The CD itself, of course, is chock full of information (ideally, anyway) promoting the company and its products and/or services. What a way to make an impression, eh! Just what will they think of next??

Whatever the next “it-thing” is going to be, standard business cards have become so…well, standardized that people are forever straining to stand out! Naturally, nothing arrests the attention like being given something that looks like a weird little CD and a strange little business car — at the same time!

To be sure, using gimmicks isn’t anything new. From the very beginning, folks have been rebelling, shall we say, against standard business cards. For example, their use in real estate has been different. In contradistinction to just about everyone else in business, real estate folks routinely include their pictures on their business cards. Yeah! And no one’s put off by it; the practice isn’t considered unprofessional at all.

For good reason. It’s a proven fact, as documented by study after study, that people buy houses based on emotional factors that are often intangible, unquantifiable. Naturally, if an agent or broker selling property can help prospective clients feel “right at home,” as the saying goes, that would be a good thing. Including a picture of oneself, therefore, is a preemptive tactic that aims to disarm the potential client — or ward him or her off entirely. After all, why waste time with a non-prospect right from the get-go?

Other industries have opted for non-traditional cards, too, though never as iconoclastic as what real estate types do. Still, evertyhing from holograms to folding cards have been tried, especially by those in advertising and marketing. All other departments — accounting, personnel, and so forth — will probably always stay traditional…standard!

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