When I started my sales career in the 1980s, the Rolodex was found on every salesperson’s desk, along with a phone book, a 5-line touch-tone phone, and an occasional ashtray. Last week I tossed my executive model number 5524 in the trash. Goodwill wouldn’t want it, half the population wouldn’t even know what it is or what it was used for. It had been quietly sleeping in a worn cardboard box with some of its old familiar friends. A dusty dog-eared set of Daytimers from 1996, an old pager, a Blackberry, and forgotten media kits, all destined for the landfill or a Hollywood movie prop store.
Smartphones were the death knell to the Rolodex, just like the computer was to the typewriter. Why store all your alphabetized business cards on a small accordion-like desk gadget when you could locate anyone on your smartphone’s contact list? I looked through those old cards attached to the semicircular steel binder, he died, she retired, this agency no longer exists, that company merged, and so on. None had email addresses, just phone numbers, and addresses.
My son started his first job out of college last summer working for one of the large national accounting firms with tens of thousands of employees, they don’t issue business cards anymore.
In our OOH industry, photos are our calling cards. As an industry veteran, Jeff Joaquin at Marquee Media recently commented on one of my posts, “We have supporting data and attribution studies to prove OOH delivers results…but only a great photo of an ad on the street will ever hang on a client’s wall. At its core, OOH is a visual medium that must move people to action….and those moments must be captured with photos.” Well said Jeff !
To promote our inventory and keep clients returning with new campaigns we need to provide good photography, no if and or buts. FotoFetch can assist when you need those photos for your clients or OBIE award entries, just ask, and we will deliver all without business cards or Rolodexes.
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