Is it a business card or is it a data disc?

Kevin,

Thank you for the opportunity to learn about trends in computing technology and how they can be adapted to small business evelopment.

Recently I had an embarassing experience. I used to subscribe to computer magazines and MIT's Technology Review. With the birth of my son about 3 years ago I cut back on my reading.

A friend showed me a disk recently and I had to honestly admit I never saw it before or knew what it was. It was a disk on which you can load information about your business and yourself and give away like a business card. "Neat," I thought.

It just goes to show that I need to "get in the know" where computing technology is concerned. Hopefully, this forum will help me get just what I need to know.

Those disks have been around for some time -- Linux vendors were using them in the late 1990s as emergency boot diskettes and advertisements at the same time. I think they're fairly slick, but I think they may be too bulky -- even at the mini-disc size -- to be truly useful.

But they did get your attention. ;)

What other unique marketing tools have you seen recently? Anyone?

--Kevin

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--Executive Editor, SmallBusinessComputing.com

What are they called? I never saw one.

Well, different vendors use different names for them. Generally, they're called Business Card CDs, and they are a smaller (mini-disc) CD that holds only 35-50MB. You can see a picture of them at http://www.nashuamedia.com/special.html.

They are actually pretty common; my son's Pokemon collection contains some mini-CDs that were issued as Pokemon cards.

--Kevin

The mini discs have become very popular in recent years.

We first started supplying interactive media projects on the business card sized disc about four years ago. They originated in Germany (or maybe Switzerland) in the mid-90s. When we started to produce them, they were very expensive...about $3.00 each.

As with most tecnology, prices have dropped considerably. Depending on quantity, we now produce them for less than $0.90 each. We've produced over a million of them for clients over the past couple of years.

As you've discovered, they are "Neat" and still carry that "Wow" factor. Clients love them.

If you want more information, go to our website www.reel1.com.

thanks for the info.

I had missed this before.

By the way, I moved this thread and renamed it so that others who are interested would be more likely to know what the thread was about.

It's not worth my time to insert one of those mini-CDs into my drive, wait for it to boot up and then sit through a tedious multi-media presentation.
I would much rather get a full-sized audio CD that I can play in my car during my "downtime" while driving to or from the office. You can put a lot of enticing information on an audio CD that will lead your prospect to seek out images, text or video on your Web site.

current technology would make it possible to do both -- have data and audio on the same CD.

but producing good audio is not easy. I think it's harder than producing good content for a computer screen.

I think it depends on the nature of the company and what they're selling. For Linux vendors, the mini-CD was used to store information so it could be used as an emergency boot diskette.

Now, there obviously aren't many companies that need to format a diskette as a boot diskette to show their expertise.

But if I'm a graphic designer, the mini-CD business card is a perfect way to distribute my portfolio. The same is if I'm an article or a Web-site designer.

It is a bad way to distribute my work if I'm a programmer, though.

--Kevin

I agree Gus.

We've been in business producing all types of media for over 20 years. Most clients choose to use visuals and special effects because, like it or not, that is what society is and expects to see.

Very rarely do we have a client requesting audio only. It's very difficult for most clients to express all of their thoughts and ideas using only audio.

I guess it depends on what you are using the CD for: If you are using it like a business card, then you are giving it to people who have only a slight interest in you and your company. . . it is advertising. It has to be very easy and convenient or people will not take the time to use it.
I don't find those little CD multimedia presentations convenient: There is no way to preview at a glance what is on them, like you can with printed material. You have to sit through the whole thing to find out what is on them. Who has time to do that.

If you are using it as a suplement to a relationship you have already established and it is something that they actually have an interest in viewing (like a portfolio you might show a prospect you have been working with), then it can be slightly less convenient.
Of course if the CD contains information that the recipient wants to view, why not just put it on your Web site or e-mail it to them and save the money of burning the CDs?

Of course if the CD contains information that the recipient wants to view, why not just put it on your Web site or e-mail it to them and save the money of burning the CDs?

Because there's the personal touch of handing it to them. There's the school of thought that you should always leave something of perceived value with a customer, and this is a way to do so. One-to-one marketing is always the most efficient marketing. Active marketing like this gets clients; passive marketing does not. I'm not saying that these are total replacements for all business cards -- you're right, that just isn't cost-effective -- so you'll need to pick your spots.

--Kevin