Let Me Give You My E-Card

Insight on the News, Oct 2, 2000 by William Glanz

Like the Internet, which helped transform commerce and communication, new high-tech business cards promise to drag us deeper into the digital age, whether we like it or not.

Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush latched onto a new high-tech trend when he handed out CD-ROM business cards at the GOP's convention. Companies have used the high-tech business cards for nearly two years for business-to-business marketing. Now political candidates are following suit.

"Politics is about marketing, and this gets a candidate anywhere there's a computer," says Tim Storer, president and founder of New Media Gateway, the Dallas-based company that produced the CD-ROM business cards for the Bush campaign.

The staff of Sen. Spencer Abraham, a Michigan Republican, passed out mini-CD-ROM disks to reporters at the Republican state convention in May -- the disks contained audio versions of a speech he had just delivered and all the content from his campaign Website. "There's a futuristic appeal," says Jack Koller, director of new media for Abraham's reelection campaign. "The medium is very good with those members of the electorate who have computers, especially the college crowd."

GOPAC, the political-action committee and candidate-education center made famous by former House speaker Newt Gingrich, has begun distributing 1,500 CD-ROM business cards as well. The disks will include a 51-minute audio message from Rep. David Dreier of California and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, both Republicans, and will contain links to GOPAC's Website.

"We're moving into the digital age, and this is a great way to get the word out," says GOPAC spokesman Dallas Lawrence. "We could send out an audiocassette, but it wouldn't have any other information on it. It wouldn't have text or the Internet link." People also are more likely to pop a CD-ROM in a computer than they are to read direct mail, adds Lawrence, because the high-tech business cards are still a novelty.

The high-tech business cards hold up to 60 megabytes of information -- six minutes of video, 100 minutes of audio and more than 10,000 pages of text. Personal computers need to be equipped with disk drives to read information on the CD-ROM cards (they don't work in music CD players). Marketers praise their economy -- they cost from 60 cents to $2 each to make, depending on the amount of content stored on them and the number of disks made at one time -- and their practicality. The disks fit in a shirt pocket, just like the business cards they resemble, and they're light enough to fit in a standard envelope and can be mailed with a 33-cent stamp.

"CD-ROM cards offer complete presentation of any products, with video and audio," says Erik Ole Breuning, president of DVD-USA, a New York-based multimedia company. And because the cards offer Web links to product sites, they appeal to clients seeking impulse buyers, whether they are adults shopping for financial servers or teenagers who seek T-shirts touting their favorite band.

In fact, Breuning predicts "e-cards" as he calls them, will replace concert and movie tickets and other admission stubs. After the entertainment, people can slip their high-tech "ticket" into their computers and watch a video of the band or an outtake from the movie, enter a promotional sweepstakes or surf to the Web to shop for related items. "There are so many things you can do with these cards," says Breuning. "Their entertainment aspect is endless. But they're practical, too. You'll be able to put all your medical data on an e-card, with X-rays and other graphic data, and carry it from doctor to doctor."

The cards have another less tangible, but equally important, benefit: They make the people handing them out look technologically savvy. "No one wants to look low-tech," says Tim Vickey, strategic Internet specialist with New Media Communications, an Ohio-based Internet consultant to political candidates.

Whatever their appeal, they work, at least according to Old Dominion University. The Norfolk, Va.-based school spent about $52,000 in October to manufacture 26,000 disks. The university's admissions office mailed the disks to prospective students looking for a school to enroll in this fall. Applications are up 13.2 percent. "Right now, this is the cutting-edge way to recruit students," exclaims John Broderick, vice president of admissions and institutional advancement.

Rex Roberts contributed to this article.