By John Kelly
Sunday, April 2, 2006

C an you tell me why real estate agents seem to be the only workers who publish their facial photos everywhere? Their photos appear on their business cards, Web sites, advertisements and sale signs in front of houses. No other profession has such mug shot overload. And because this profession focuses on the look and appeal of man-made structures, why do these people think we need to know what they look like?

Kate Schwarz, Fairfax

It's true. Answer Man can close his eyes and picture the real estate agents who fight and scrap over the turf in his neighborhood. There's Carol and Mary and Peggy . And don't forget the husband-and-wife team of Gabe and Kathy .

Answer Man has never met most of them, but their faces are as familiar to him as his children's, thanks to the numerous business cards, newsletters, complimentary calendars and refrigerator magnets bearing their smiling visages.

Why do real estate agents plaster their kissers everywhere? It can't be that they're all stuck up, can it?

"First of all," said Paul Valentino, regional vice president of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, "real estate sales is a person-to-person industry. The product is real estate, but it's people-to-people. So the original concept was, 'Let's show people who they may deal with.' " (This isn't the case with commercial real estate, Paul said.)

Melinda Roark , a Coldwell Banker agent in Southern Maryland, said the face blitz is "marketing for ourselves. To me, if someone connects a face with a name, it's a stronger bond than if they just get a name."

Melinda became an agent 18 years ago, which was just about when advances in printing technology first allowed people to put their photos -- first black-and-white, then color -- on their business cards at a reasonable price.

This was followed by a rise in "personal branding" in the real estate industry. That's the desire of some agents to market themselves, or their "team," independently of their umbrella firm.

Said Paul, "Personal branding has really accelerated in the past 10 years, to the point where a person's [marketing materials] may include more information, not just a head shot, but action photos, photos with other people or of them placing a 'For Sale' sign on a property."

Paul estimates that 70 percent of the agents at Coldwell Banker have their photos on their cards. This, in turn, results in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy: Although we don't expect to see a photo on a business card from a lawyer or plumber, it's de rigueur for agents.

Still, Paul noted, "interestingly enough, we just finished a focus group here in the Washington-Baltimore area, and the general conception from those people was that they didn't really need to see a photo in an ad or a business card. It was an eye-opener for us."

Another group of professionals rivals real estate agents in the business card mug shot sweepstakes, said Ivan R. Misner , co-author of "It's in the Cards!," a book on creating attention-getting business cards: entertainers for hire. These include magicians and clowns, the sort of people who perform at kids' birthday parties.

"It shows them in action, so to speak," Ivan said.

Flipping through his book, Ivan came across another type of service provider who gave himself a starring role on his business card: a well-muscled, and shirtless, personal trainer.

"He wants to show just how fit he is, which is kind of important," Ivan said. "You don't want to walk around a business meeting without your shirt on."

Maybe not, but it would sure liven up some of the business meetings Answer Man attends.

Julia Feldmeier helped research this column. Something stumping you? Ask Answer Man:answerman@washpost.com, or John Kelly, The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071.