You Shouldn't Laminate Your Vaccine Card (and That Means New Opportunities for Promo Sales)

The vaccination card is now an iconic little piece of paper. Thanks to widespread vaccine availability and the now-popular “Vaccine Selfie,” you don’t need to read a single word on the card to know what it is.

The vaccine card is obviously worth more than the paper it’s printed on, and because of that, people want to protect it from damage. As vaccine availability increased, Staples announced that it would laminate your vaccine card for free.

Sounds great, right? Why wouldn’t you want to protect your CDC card?

Well, as the health community’s understanding of the virus changes, coupled with possible mutations and new strains surfacing, it’s possible that your two-shot vaccine card might not be ready for retirement.

Eventually, there could be a system where you can upload your vaccine card for what people are calling a “vaccine passport,” aka a digital representation of your vaccine status for use at events or travel. But, until that point, the card is the only official signifier.

If you laminate it, it would be difficult to add any subsequent boosters in the future.

So, we’re at a difficult point where protecting a relatively flimsy piece of paper is necessary, but lamination isn’t a smart move. And this is where promotional product ingenuity comes into play.

Think about how important face masks, a product category on the fringes of relevance for the average consumer, became over the last year. If you weren't offering face masks, you were behind. Vaccine card protection could be the next product category related to the pandemic.

People can buy protector sleeves, just like they’d use at events for an ID badge. Obviously, you aren’t carrying your vaccination card around with you everywhere you go, but it works at home or if you need it for travel eventually.

There are lots of opportunities to incorporate a protective sleeve for a passport. It could be a simple sleeve with the health care company or facility’s branding on it, which they would give to vaccine recipients like a sticker.

That way, it’s protected from the minute they leave, and they’ll display your client’s branding wherever they take it.

Or, if it does come to light that travel will rely on bringing your vaccine card, it could be a travel wallet/passport holder with a clear pocket to display a vaccine card.

There's still plenty to learn about what the future holds for COVID vaccinations—such whether they'll need to be recurring like a flu shot or not, or how long we'll need to hold onto our cards—but, in the meantime, the importance of the cards presents unique product ideas for the promotional industry.