Several months ago I decided to sponsor a local technology networking event, to raise awareness of my company and hopefully make some good contacts. Knowing there would be a couple of dozen other sponsors and hundreds of attendees, I printed loud postcards and tried to come up with a clever tchotchke idea—something memorable that people will keep so you're top of mind later on when they need your services.

Loud, provocative postcards to get people's attention:

My brilliant idea was Chinese fortune sticks: bamboo sticks with fortunes printed on them. They seemed like the perfect giveaway—pocket-sized, inexpensive, fun, a conversation starter—I only needed to figure out how to get my brand on them.

After rejecting various ideas, I ended up ordering a custom rubber stamp with my URL. They type fit nicely on the back of the stick and ink wouldn't rub off. I stamped out 300 or so of these sticks—hey, this is why they pay me the big bucks—and let them dry for a week (necessary as the back side of the stick is coated with urethane).

Fun fortune sticks:

Why they pay me the big bucks:

Then I wrapped the container in a custom printout because, you know, branding is everything:

The fortune sticks were a hit!

Except for one tiny problem. Some of the fortunes said things like:

I knew there were bad fortunes, of course. I thought they were funny. But people HATED getting them. They complained, made faces, gave me dirty looks, wanted to trade them in for better fortunes. One woman followed me around the room telling everyone, "her fortunes are terrible"! It wasn't that they believed the bad fortune would come to pass, their reaction was more like finding a worm in a candy apple.

At first, I didn't think much of it except to wonder why people were taking a silly fortune stick so seriously. But after a while, when everyone had the same reaction to the bad fortunes, I began to feel like I'd made a fatal mistake. People who got bad fortunes made jokes about how they'd never visit my website. They seemed embarrassed by their bad luck.

I hastily purged my canister, so I was only handing out positive or neutral fortunes. Which for some reason made me feel like a cheat—a dealer with nothing but aces—except now everyone was happy.

It wasn't until I got home that I realized I'd ignored my own advice about networking (see "The Grass is Greener"). No one likes bad news; optimism is always more popular than pessimism. Further, it occurred to me that folks are no doubt tired of hearing bad news. The last thing they wanted was for a stranger to walk up and give them a bad fortune.

So, memo to myself: Bad news is not funny, even fake bad news. Positive messages may be trite and superficial, but in a networking situation where you're meeting people for the first time, anything else can too easily backfire on you.

[ Kim Bieler wrote this article and she welcomes your comments. ]