Did the ‘Visiting Card’ get run over by a Truck?
Over the past few months, I have noticed that very few people in the Digital Space at least even possess cards – leave alone bother to exchange them.
Before this, people had begun saying ‘err…my cards are out for printing OR i have a new job title etc’, but now, its like ‘I don’t have business cards’.
If you are on Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, and Foursquare, do you need visiting cards? Also, how many people actually scan and index their cards perfectly so that you can look them up when you need to?
Visiting Cards are useful when:
– You check into a hotel and are too lazy to fill in the registration details.
– In governemnet offices, where the sleazy peon needs to slip the sleazy boss your card to announce your arrival outside his cabin.
– To just show off – Yeah, I’m the CEO of the Kalbadevi Typewriter Company.
– Surely to put in the lucky draw bowls outside restaurants to win free lunches.
Its sooo cool NOT to have visiting cards.
Its like saying ‘you know who I am and if you don’t, look me up on the web. If you cant find me on the web then probably I’m not worth knowing’.
(Ps – if the person finding you CANT look you up, then probably you dont need to know him :-))
Ok – that stuff above is very snobbish ‘dot com’ attitude.
I think ‘visiting cards’ are OK to have if you are still in Brick and Mortar businesses and need that ice breaker to start chatting and also ‘plant your flag’ when others have planted theirs on discussion tables and in meeting rooms.
In conferences, using your visiting card is the best way to collect your badge and also insert on the opposite side of your necklace- so that when the necklace accidentally twirls and flips to the ‘blank’ side, you no longer are ‘anonymous’ but you can show your name and Janam Patri.
Ah – not to forget mentioning a 26 year old Cassanova I know who gives his cards to all the airhostesses in all the flights he takes – hoping that one of them will call him one day 🙂
I think Visiting Cards if designed well can also speak about your Company and what it stands for (or doesn’t stand for).
Trivia – Japanese businessmen have Plastic Cards so that they can exchange them in swimming pools :-))
Tell me what you think about this ubiquitous piece of paper!?