Do Millennials Read?

        

Yes. Especially print.

Iron Mountain Knowledge Center asks, "Do you think the world is abandoning the printed page? Research indicates that a trend toward the tactile—even among Millennials—is opening up exciting new creative opportunities for fulfillment collateral."

In 2014, more than eight out of ten American adults would rather read magazines in hard copy than online. Similarly, 67 percent would rather read a book with a spin than one that glows. This information comes from a report by JWT, the New York marketing communications firm formerly known as J. Walter Thompson.

Do you know what's even more surprising, midway into the second decade of the 21st century? This trend is consistent among generations, even the grew-up-online Millennials, according to the same report, "Embracing Analog: Why Physical Is Hot."

Eight out of 10 Millennials say, "Physical cards/letters make me feel more connected to people than digital notes (emails, SMS, etc.)." These findings, as well as other studies, are calling upon the printed page to play a larger role in your marketing collateral and fulfillment efforts.         

Yes. Especially plain vanilla text and “print-like” apps.

A September 2014 article in The Atlantic reports that 88 percent of Americans under 30 said they had read a book in the past year compared with 79 percent of those over 30. At the same time, American readers' relationship with public libraries is changing—with younger readers less likely to see public libraries as essential in their communities. But wait … there’s more.

         “Moreover, young mobile readers don’t want apps and mobile browsers that look like the future. They want apps that look like the past: 58 percent of those under 50 and 60 percent of Millennials, prefer a ‘print-like experience’ over tech features like audio, video, and complex graphics. That preference toward plain text ‘tends to hold up across age, gender, and other groups’.”

Yes. Except for “e-versions.”

In her June 24, 2014 LinkedIn article Millennials: Digital vs. Print, Anna Burnham, coordinator at Everthrive, Illinois, tells this story: “…I hate e-versions. I own a Kindle, and it has been sitting in a drawer dead since I received it as a gift. Of course I use Twitter to get the majority of my news, but that is because the quality of magazines and newspapers has devolved into what I believe to be tabloid quality news … It is tempting to say that Millennials are e-version addicts who don’t appreciate the ‘older’ ways of doing things; that we are the ones driving the market. But in reality, what Millennials all crave is a media source, a book, or a show, which guides us and shows us the meaningful side of aging into adulthood just as books, the radio, newspapers, and magazines did for the generations before.”

Comme ci; comme ça.

In April 2013, Edelman’s Research Insight featured an article by Alex Abraham, senior VP of Edelman’s 8095® Millennial Insights Group. His article was titled “Millennials Hate Traditional Media. Or Do They?” Here’s what Abraham came up with:

• 93 percent of Millennials had read a magazine in the previous 60 days.

• 23 percent of Millennials had read a newspaper the day before, which was not that much lower than the general population.

         Abraham concluded, “One thing I have learned from my research of the Millennial generation is that for every study proving a point, there is likely another saying the opposite. But the insights above do show us that we have not yet entered a world where everything has to be digital to reach Millennials.”         

Yes. With visuals, please.

The Millennial Marketing blog made a “Yes-But” case in its post titled, “Do Millennials Read? Yes, But They Read Differently.”

“Perhaps the biggest take away is that Millennials are capable of taking in a lot of visual information at once, probably more than older generations, provided it is presented in an attractive and easily digestible way. This makes good design as important, if not more important, than good writing. In studies where we have had an opportunity to compare age groups, it is striking how much more attuned younger consumers are to the way information appears on the page. Older consumers tend to overlook poor design and focus on the meaning. Millennials have a hard time getting past the way it looks.”

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The Evolution of Twitter and Me

Common wisdom has it that Twitter growth is sliding. Maybe. But, in some unexpected ways, I find myself more attached to Twitter than ever.

You see, my use of Twitter has evolved from promotional outreach to community reach. Here's what I mean:

1. I really don't want to build a huge Twitter list. I want a select list and I'm fanatical about dividing my Twitter followers (from all three accounts) into specific categories. Admittedly, sometimes I'm not sure why I do this so religiously. I do have a feeling that some day I'll be glad I did; maybe it's the database marketer in me.

2. Twitter is a community. For instance, I can't watch the nightly news without turning on the Twitter account where my progressive friends hang out. I not only learn a great deal about what's going on, I can exchange thoughts with like-minded friends.

3. Twitter is a secondary key news source. If anything significant (or even of personal interest to me) happens nationwide or globally, I follow the hashtag. That's where I get the most current news and the opinion.

4 Generally speaking, hashtags are a vital search method for me -- less commonly used, perhaps, but equal to Google. Likewise, I don't tweet without hashtags.

5 Twitter is my search engine of choice for matters close to my heart: politics, marketing, writing, etc. Here's where the experts I know and respect hang out.

So, yes. I've noticed some key differences in my Twitter use lately. Anyone else?

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Forbes -- and Marketers -- Still Love Direct Mail. Here's Why.

Forbes isn't telling us anything we don't already know: Especially for B2B sales, when it comes to outbound marketing [aka prospecting] direct mail gets attention better than anything else (lots better).

In Forbes' article, writer Lois Geller talks primarily about the success of print catalogues, but the comments -- many from marketers themselves -- tell the larger story of why direct mail works so well.

"With the mountain of social media and other on-line marketing and advertising ‘noise’, getting something delivered right to you increases the chance it will be seen."
-- Terri L. Maurer

"Consumers appreciate direct mail’s tangibility, flexibility and once-a-day pace."
--Prospects Influential

"The fact that direct mail is rarely used in some segments, makes it effective. We tried a direct mail piece to a tech audience that was nearly 100% online in communication. This was a market segment that was on twitter all day long talking about topics and technology. We decided to measure success just like we did with our online investments – clicks to the website and ultimately form completions and leads for sales. The results from the direct mail piece beat many of our online offers at a similar price point. No, direct mail isn’t dead at all. Smart B2B marketers will use it in a precise and targeted fashion to drive similar results t online."
-- Bryan Semple

"As a direct mail copywriter for over 30 years, I’m glad to see someone touting the non-dying nature of direct mail. Here’s hoping we see renewed life in the beautiful — and highly effective — direct mail packages from the 80′s. Real writing and actual graphic design — what a concept! I love catalogs, but I miss clever headlines on outer envelopes, crisply written four-page letters and highly engaging four-color foldout brochures. It’s a bygone era that businesses ought to rethink and resurrect. I hope they do. I’m ready to write!"
-- Ken Schnieder

See you around the mailbox.

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The Early History of Social Media: Back to the Beginning

Nearly six years ago, in October 2007, the Direct Marketing Association of Washington (DC), hosted one of the country’s first major conferences on social media. Speaking at the “New Media Marketing Day” were a host of folks who would become social media “stars,” including chair and plenary speaker Geoff Livingston. Joining Geoff were keynoters, Valeria Maltoni and CC Chapman.

Notes from that meeting, which follow, demonstrate the extent to which a little known and less understood communications “practice” would influence – even dominate – marketing in 2013. Many of the notes here seem quaint and outdated! Before you laugh, though, consider how today’s social media will look to us in 2018.

Also, having been given six years to perfect the practice, consider how well developed your own social media efforts today are, or are not. 

Community

We kept hearing about community at New Media Marketing Day [by the way, the term new media itself is rapidly dying among the cognoscenti… old hat and all that, you know … but we digress …].

        

Jake McKee, social media consultant who blogs at Ant’s Eye View refers to the “collusion of marketing, community, and product design.”

         Geoff Livingston tells direct marketers that “Your job now is to build a community.” Jim Long, an NBC cameraman turned entrepreneur and founder of Verge New Media [vergenewmedia.com], vlogs, blogs, Twitters, and more. Long says, “The value proposition of social media is that it allows us to connect across lines—geographic, time, physical, and social barriers disappear.” Long adds, “Social Media isn’t out-of-the-box branding. It’s agricultural. You plant a seed and watch it grow.”

Conversation

We also heard a lot about conversation. Actually, the conversation conversation dates back to at least 1999, when the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto noted that, “A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.”

         “So what is this thing called ‘conversation’,” asks NMMD speaker Valeria Maltoni, who’s been blogging for a year at conversationagent.com and has written The Age of Conversation. With 900 RSS subscribers, Valeria says, “…Start your own conversation in whichever medium works for your business and personality. Get out there, outside the walls and put your ear to the ground. Direct marketing is definitely about the conversation, about figuring out what the customer needs.” 

Listening

… Which brings us to listing. What’s the attitude inherent in “new media?” Valeria Maltoni sums it up as “I’m listening to you,” (which is a little different, maybe from direct marketing, which – historically, anyway – has been more “I’m talking to you.”). Maltoni says that in the new media/social media environment, customers need to be plugged into every level of your organization.

        

Should your organization start a blog?

Maltoni suggests that organizations begin with an internal blog. Look for the right voice within the organization (hint: it’s probably not the CEO). Strive for energy, authenticity, and a voice that can be taken outside. “Your personality has to come through; your blog has to sound like you,” Maltoni says.

          NMMD speaker, C.C. Chapman [www.managingthegray.com], tags bloggers as the cruise director, not the drill sergeant. “If you’re going to blog, make sure it’s conversational and authentic. I’m totally opposed to somebody ghostwriting blogs … Right now, somebody is talking about something you care about, about your brand. Find out what they’re saying.”

         Afraid what you might hear? Chapman shrugs. “Angry people are better than silent people.” NMMD speaker Stephen Marion, Ogilvy, puts it this way: “Reading blogs exposes your company to venomous attitudes and gives you the chance to resolve problems. You can build greater trust [[in the marketplace] by not running away from the issues. A blog may not mitigate your critics, but you can engender more loyalty from your fans.”

         In late September, the New York Times ran piece titled “Promote Your Business With A Company Blog.” The Times said, “Blogs are gaining more and more traction in the business world. Experts believe the trend will continue, and that companies should at least monitor blogs to gain knowledge about what's being said about their products and services. And if you have the time and inclination to launch your own blog, the result could be increased business visibility, excited audiences, and added revenue.” Added revenue. Hmmm..

         

Geoff Livingston, blogger extraordinaire, offered the following Seven Principles of Blogging:

1. Give people control; let people talk.
2. Be transparent.
3. Participation is marketing. As soon as you start blogging, you are part of a community.
4. You’re part of a community when you blog, so marketers need to be generalists.
5. Get your stakeholders to keep talking to you.
6. General content regularly.
7. Use technology and merge it with community, intelligently.

Twitter

For fast community-building, a number of speakers at NMMD were all atwitter about “Twitter,” the social micro-blog that’s growing in popularity among groups with common interest. Popular with the tween crowd. Twitter lets people passionate about the same thing (direct marketing?) connect seamlessly, quickly, and often. That creates an international digital network that can become very tight, very friendly, very fast.

         CC Chapman is part of the select Twitter crowd interested in social and new media. These some-one thousand are influential folks because most – if not all – blog. That’s a lot of social media flying around and Twitter sets it on fire. “I had a recent experience with an airline and I was very frustrated. I kept thinking, ‘If they mess with me, I am so twittering this.’”

         Still, if anything confused NMMD attendees, it was probably Twitter. The speakers were enthused, while the direct marketers remained confused. Why? WHY Twitter?

         Jim Long—who likens Twitter to a cocktail party—did a live demonstration of Twitter’s reach and later blogged about the experience, writing, “In my presentation, I demonstrated how Twitter can be used and misused as an engagement tool. At one point I called out to all of YOU on Twitter, and asked if you’d say hello to the DMAW session. While waiting for some responses to generate, CC Chapman, in what can almost be described as a movie moment, stopped me and said almost chillingly: ‘Jim.. refresh the page.’ You guys had come through!! There were no less than 80 immediate responses. (thank you!) I think that aptly demonstrated Twitter’s immediate, conversational, attention-directing value. I also pointed out that Team Twitter had  helped shape my presentation in the comments on my blog.”

Really, What’s In It For Us?

Having said all that, many still wonder, “What’s social media to direct marketers?” Jim Long says social media brings multiple audiences, to whom direct marketers can speak simultaneously. “’Closing’ is still reserved for the direct mail appeal and that nifty thing known as the ‘telephone,’” he admits. Well, yes and no and “so far,” that is, because now there’s widgets—those small portable bits of code that can be embedded on blogs, in Facebook and MySpace, on websites—anywhere html code resides. Widgets can elicit donations, show browsers how to participate, direct readers “here,” and otherwise prompt action—which can then (hurray!) be measured!

          Widgets are fun—and there’s plenty of potential for these little entertainment pops to go commercial. Non-profits and political fundraisers (who are always early adopters of technology) have already seen the potential. Many are creating fundraising widgets that play as YouTube videos, logos with an appeal, straight-away “donate here” buttons, and more. NMMD speaker Clinton O’Brien, vice president of business development at Care2, told us to “keep an eye on sniperoo.com.” If you use widgets or want to use widgets to add interesting stuff to your site, Snipperoo claims to let you collect and use them without hacking code (enough about that here; for more, ask you IT guy or gal).

         Not surprisingly on the Wild Wild Web, widgets also are being used by individuals to raise money for their favorite cause. Check out http://widgetfundraising.org for a step-by-step how-to case study on how one person purportedly raised $800 for a Cambodian orphan’s college fund. [Editor's note: This link is no longer working. What was a "widget" back then? Do they even exist today?]    

         But how important are widgets, really? Susan Merritt, who leads product development at Yahoo! Personals, says, “Widgets could be flavor of the moment, but the ways that some widgets intersect with structured data is one of the things I find compelling : For one thing, widgets (and microformats) offer the opportunity for users-and small business people, among others--to embed applications and dynamic apps into their pages/sites. If you hang around MySpace, you see videoplayer widgets (think YouTube), slideshow players (RockYou) that have been cut and pasted in by users --and swickis, a eurekster product I worked on--are everywhere. So if you have content or tools, wouldn't you want users to be able to export them? And if you have APIs, don't you want people to build widgets with them--and then distribute those?”

Big Social Networks for Raising Money?

NMMD speaker Trish Taylor Shuman of Care2 noted that, so far, most nonprofits have not had much success in raising significant funds via social networking sites such as Change.org and Facebook Causes, launched in June. One notable exception is the American Cancer Society, which raised more than $100,000 in 2007 on virtual-life website Second Life. Similarly, the site SixDegrees.org quickly raised more than $300,000 in funds for an assortment of charities, within a few months of its January 2007 launch, although SixDegrees.org benefited greatly from a lot of promotion and financial support from actor Kevin Bacon.

         Overall, results for most group fundraising efforts on social networks are not stellar. While a few of the top organizations on Facebook Causes have done well — a campaign to support breast cancer research and “Save Darfur,” for example — the vast majority of the tens of thousands of participating organizations are what Shuman called the “long tail of Facebook Causes,” about 40% of which appear to be less-than-serious, “fluff” causes (such as one very popular cause called "Save Water, Drink Beer," and another called "Save the Oompa Loompas.")

         Recent research by Peter Dietz, founder of foik [socialactions.com], provides benchmark figures for fundraising at social networking groups like ChipIn, Firstgiving, GiveMeaning, SixDegrees, and JustGive. Dietz has tabulated $44 million raised from peer-to-peer efforts, but figures for number of participants, average donation, and median donation are very small. Dietz notes that “sustained supporter engagement”’ and “network growth by design” are goals that go far beyond donations in the bank.” But Shuman warms that, to date, “It’s a sobering message.” 

p.s. Any links that don't work demonstrate how fast "the new" disappears.

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Big Data Doesn’t Know A Thing, But It Sure Can Ask the Right Questions

When I was 12, I remember telling my mother that if a human being could know all the events that factor into the moment just before an automobile accident, it would be possible to avoid the accident. Little did I know that, a) I was talking about “big data;” b) I was wrong.

Fortunately, a couple of guys who actually know what they’re talking about have written the book that explains it all: Predicting the Future With ‘Big Data’.

Kenneth Cukier is data editor for The Economist and Viktor Mayer-Schönberger is Professor of internet governance and regulation at Oxford University. The co-authors appeared on the Kojo Nnamdi show March 7.

If I understand what Cukier and Mayer-Schönberger are saying, big data leads us not to more facts, but to more data, within which will be more questions and, therefore, greater opportunities for insights. And yet, the whys of “the universe” will remain a mystery.

More Data Is Just More Data
The paradox, apparently, is this: More data negates — or at least counter-balances — the need for perfect data. Mayer-Schönberger puts it this way: “… as we have more data, we can also be accepting some inexactitude in how we collect the data and how perfectly curated the data is because we just have so much of it … [And, any move away from] an elusive quest to find causality, targets something much more pragmatic and much simpler called correlations. It means that we are not looking for the why. We are looking for the what and that’s good enough.”

The Power of the Spread Is the Greatest Power Yet
Mayer-Schönberger thinks both the invention of the printing press and the invention of the Internet will be dwarfed by another major leap forward: not the mere spreading of information, but the spreading of the power of information. [Crowd-sourcing, anyone? Or, maybe, targeted sharing?]

Say what? Cukier explains. “You can imagine that [big data is] going to actually change the way that businesses run. They’ll find their most precious asset might not be what they’re actually building [or selling or offering], but the data that goes into it — because they can learn from [that data] and cross-apply it to other things.”

Got data?
You’re in the cat bird’s seat. And you know it. As a marketer, you know better than to despair at data results. You just test again … and again. You just get more data.

Cukier gives us a good example: “Imagine an algebra teacher who would find out that 60 percent of her students got the same question wrong with the exact same answer. She would, therefore, learn that, in fact, maybe she taught the algebra wrong, that maybe she wasn’t clear enough.” Insight. New testing. More data.

Data Is Fake
Should we worry about the issue of big data and our privacy? Sure, because we always need to be vigilant as a society not to misuse or abuse big data. But keep calm.

Cuckier explains. “Data is only a simulacrum of reality. It is not the real thing, firstly. Also, we’ll never have all the data. That’s not actually possible … So this sort of hypothetical thought experiment of what will happen when we know everything about everyone, that day is just not going to happen. So on a practical level, to get wound up in knots about this doesn’t seem useful..”

If only I’d known then what I know now …

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“Marketing Is Dead.” Agreed?

Author Bill Lee thinks so and shares that view in his August 9 Harvard Business Review blog post of the same title.

The post, which has generated over 600 comments, laid out Lee’s case that, “Traditional marketing isn’t really working anywhere.” Lee says, don’t despair. “Actually, we already know in great detail what the new model of marketing will look like. It's already in place in a number of organizations. Here are its critical pieces:”

1. Community marketing via social media that replicates the community-oriented buying experience.

2. Participation of customer influencers who are given “something to talk about.”

3. Customers who advocate for the brand with an eye to building their own “social capital” (for example, access to special knowledge) via affiliation networks

4. Customer advocates who get involved in solution development via participation in a “peer-influence” effort.

Not surprisingly, Lee’s post drew some vivid disagreement. Winston Groom III complained, “Why is anyone even talking about this blog post? The headline has been done before. The author's strategic recommendations are stale. His writing style is distinctive and formulaic. The author's experience/background is unimpressive. I don't get it.”

Others, like Chris W agreed that marketing is terminal. “If I go to make a major purchase on something such as electronics or a car I'm going to first go through multiple websites and see what the ratings are.  Next I'm going to talk to someone I know that has knowledge on such products and get opinions from them.  Also with online shopping being as big as it is you can look up what you're already thinking about purchasing and look at what others have to say that have already bought the product.  I don't think that traditional marketing will ever have a place with how technology has advanced in social media, and product research.”

But the aticle has many defenders, too Deniz Ayaydin says, “I think this article makes a good point and has some powerful examples.  I think the thesis is not that marketing is dead, but more acurately that *traditional* marketing is dead.  This is pretty clear by the end of the piece … The smart marketers get this idea and it's incredibly powerful.  Not to drop lingo, but in the marketing community there is a concept called 'Earned Media' -- this term basically referrals to endorsement from people you know and trust that are not associated with the company (the company earned their endorsement somehow, presumably through a positive customer experience:  That's what this article is suggesting is more important than traditional.”

Other commenters were amused. Howard Slow wrote, “I've just read all 573 comments... sparked terrific debate, that means a lot of marketers are probably scared! :) I remember the debate "IT is dead" created too. Well done peeing on the hornets' nest, Bill.”

Why not read it yourself?

Source: Harvard Business Review blog (blogs.hbr.org), August 2012

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