August 18 – National Badge Ribbon Day

nPosted on August 18, 2019

Key Points

nHere’s something I know NOTHING about:

nBadge ribbons.

The origin of this little item is something I DO know about: the lowly name tag. Instead of one of those dreadful stick-em name tags (which always and forever gets caught in my long hair), attendees of important conferences and conventions and award ceremonies often get nicely printed name tags that fit into plastic name tag holders. They are generally worn around the neck or clipped on:

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nThese name tags are often called badges.

nIt used to be that, in some conferences (etc.), certain categories of people needed to be indicated on the badge or name tag. For example, it’s helpful to all the organizers, the wait staff, and the other attendees to know that this person is one of the award winners and that person is a judge, that this person is one of the speakers, he’s a board member, she’s a sponsor, and this woman over here is the organization’s president. At other conferences, it’s great to know which company, university, or school each person is associated with.

nWhen a categorization is handled with something subtle like a colored dot, it’s hard to remember that, say, red means Harvard University and yellow means Yale. For this reason, printed ribbons are often attached to the badges. Sometimes one person will have quite a lot of ribbons.

nEnter someone’s fun idea: what if people were offered funny badge ribbons? Would anyone wear them?

nAccording to PCNameTag, badge ribbons like “My Ribbon Is Better Than Yours,” “Bored Member,” and “Awesomesauce” are really popular, and they can be used as freebies to attract people to, say, come to a particular booth or participate in a particular activity.