Park&Co

How we created buzz around something as simple as a business card.

Business meetings have many time-honored traditions. From handshakes to introductions to obligatory PowerPoint presentations, every meeting has customs we've come to know and love and loathe. But no modern meeting formality is as routine as the exchange of business cards. This ritual seems so important at the time, yet how many of these cards ever see the light of day again? This got us thinking, as it became time to update our own cards. How could we give recipients something that worked harder for us and for them?

Of course, we're not the first to reconsider the business card. Many companies have recently overhauled their 2" x 3" presence with brash colors, foil embossing, space-aged polymers and unique shapes and sizes. Unfortunately, most of these new and improved designs offer exactly the same information they always did, resulting in a card that's just that much harder to shred or repurpose. (Ever used one for flossing? Great in a pinch.)

We decided to go with a simple, clean design that offered something extra: a curious request in the upper right hand corner. It asks the recipient to Google a little phrase about that person. Try it. Search "The fastest white man alive" and see what you get. That's Ryan, our P.R. and word of mouth guy. There's much more to Ryan's personality than we could ever hope to fit on a throwaway card, so we linked it to his web page. And the experience of Googling him makes Ryan, his card and us much more memorable.

Now, instead of just a piece of cardboard, each member of Park&Co can hand someone an intriguing reason to find out more about them and our company. Granted, some our search phrases are a bit bizarre (Try "I'll raise you a rabbit"), but who wants to search "I'm a P.R. and word of mouth guy"?

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