Where in the world am I today?: Woke up in Vancouver, BC, Canada, will go to bed in Miami, FL, USA

This whole trading card thing started for me back in November of 1995 on a trip to Japan. That trip also happened to end with me getting engaged and I’ll happily admit that my now wife saying ‘YES’ was a far more historic event in my life, but the idea to create a trading card to promote myself also happens to have been one of the best marketing decisions I’ve made ever!

The full history that lead to the creation of Super Star Performer Cards and the website can be seen at here: http://www.checkerhead.com/history.html, but what the site never really conveyed fully is how much fun these things are.

The reason you spend money on promotional material is so you can give it away, and the more you give away the better. Sure it costs you money to do this, but I’ve run across performers who, after spending a ton of money on their promo, have a hard time parting with it… This completely defeats the whole purpose of spending the money in the first place… The whole point is to give it away.

Now I can understand wanting to be somewhat selective, targeting your market for maximum effectiveness etc. etc. etc., but in the end, the whole idea here is to give this stuff away–Period–end of statement.

This is what makes trading cards so much fun. Depending on how many cards you order, the cost per card works out to between about 4¢ and 13¢ a pop and with a price tag like that you can afford to hand them out like crazy thus creating a buzz and hype about your show before the recipient of the card even really has any idea of what it is you do.

Some might argue that it costs next to nothing to send out an email, but there’s a satisfaction in handing someone something, and unlike most business cards or,  as in the above example, an email, a trading card seems to be an instant conversation starter.

For some bizarre reason, my experience has been that people seem to want them more than a business card, and again, for some bizarre reason seem to hold on to them. I can’t tell you how many times someone has come up to me, pulled out their wallet and pulled out a trading card that I had given them years ago.

Perhaps these are particularly well suited to the fun nature that I try to promote during my show and I’ll happily admit that these aren’t for everyone. I’ll also admit to having crafted the beginning of my show so that I can use the hype that these cards generate to wind a crowd up and get them excited about what they’re about to see.

There’s something quite ridiculous about having your own trading card and suggesting that others might want to collect them, but this seems to suit the ridiculous nature of my show and people, for the most part, seem to enjoy getting swept up in the hype and the enthusiasm and isn’t that what most entertainment is all about anyway?

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 5th, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under Marketing, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.