Companies that sell services rather than tangible products are always at a mindspace disadvantage because they don’t have the chance to stamp their name and logo on everything that goes out the door. They even spraypaint stacks of lumber with the mill’s logo; how do you duplicate that when you’re a consultant?

On the other hand, constant exposure usually equals dilution. If somebody at Pepsi handed you a business card, would you really care? You have 3 in your fridge at home and you’ve already seen six or seven on television this morning. When your name and logo aren’t out there all the time, the impact you can make with a well-thought-out name drop is much deeper.

You’ve probably held a thousand electrical cords in your life, but a strand of cord with an unfamiliar logo is an entirely different thing altogether. If every cord was stamped with ‘DOE,’ you wouldn’t even notice it after a while.

Best card I’ve seen lately? Tie between an attorney’s card showing the back side of the lady with scales of justice saying let us handle the dirty work of your legal business and a carpenter with a wood veneer card (did fit in my rolodex).

Also, rolodex? Really? :) I don’t have a rolodex and I wonder how many people these days do, but here’s what happens 99.9% of the time someone gives me a business card: I put it in my pocket, on my desk, or in my wallet, and if it doesn’t get lost within the next week or so, it gets transferred to the Giant-Box-O’-Business-Cards-That-I-Never-Look-At-Unless-Prompted-To. The rate at which I refer to business cards I’ve received in the past is definitely in the single digit percents. The nice thing about the Business Cords is that they don’t go in the box. They go somewhere else. Somewhere else that I will definitely remember.

Standard business cards provide an air of authority which can be easily lost with a poor implementation of any idea.

I’ve recently become fascinated with business cards and unique designs. If anyone e;se is on a bcard high, check out a post I put togheter on the Six most uniquely creative business cards of SXSWi 2007

“A hacker, entrepreneur, and all around mischief maker, Melvin wanted something he could give to peers and prospective clients that spoke of this nature. A lockpick concept was chosen very early on, and the post production results were excellent. The picks can quite easily be removed from the card and are entirely functional as lockpicks.”

I agree with Don, though… not because it won’t fit in my rolodex (I agree, Mike: what rolodex? It’s called .vcard and Address Book), but because it’s much more of a “giveaway” than a business card. After the initial five minute honeymoon period, giveaways just clutter my bottom desk drawers, make me stressed out about organization, and are eventually unceremoniously thrown away . (Most) magnets are ugly, and those corporate pens are all cheap and no comparison to the Pilot Precise v5.

Neat, but no thanks.

Now there’s a thought (speaking of record albums and business cards). Is “album art” a lost art now? Will business cards soon be that way? (it wouldn’t appear so right now!) :)