I Couldn't Go Back if I Wanted To

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Quotes highlighted in blue in this post come from one of the sources listed below.


One of the reasons for retiring when I did was the realization that my education and experience in marketing was quickly becoming irrelevant. To help the company succeed in designing, testing, introducing, and promoting new products was going to take a completely new set of marketing skills and competencies. While I was trying to keep up, I could tell the game was moving too fast for me to add value in the future.

To reach 50 million users: Radio - 38 years; TV - 13 years; Internet - 4 years; Facebook - 3 months

The impact of the consequent change was illustrated for me recently as I dabbled in my previous workspace. Friends asked me to critique flyers they were creating to promote their non-profit organization. In providing feedback and some construct from which to make improvements, it was clear we were spending a lot of time trying to optimize the buggy-whip. The same feeling came as I created a sponsor recruitment brochure for the Sawbones Air Racing team. All the words and pictures, to be reproduced on a printed page, were going to reach a rapidly diminishing audience. The real communication had to happen on social media platforms.

More people own a mobile device than a toothbrush.

Not to say that printed media and traditional communication collateral don't have a place or aren't needed. There are still a lot of buggies out there. In the case of the air racing team, contributors are more likely to be senior enthusiasts. Those that still have a connection to WWII, or a fascination with combustion engines, horsepower, and the thrill of flight. Those folks generally prefer to get their  information on a printed page. But even that demographic is rapidly moving to electronic devices to become aware of what's new, what's out there, or what's happening.

Grandparents are the fastest growing demographic on Twitter. The fastest growing segment of Facebook users - 55-65 year old females.

I grew up and operated under the 4 P's of marketing that emanated out of the 60's - Product, Place, Price, and Promotion. In the last few years, those P's are being superseded by the 4 C's of digital - Creating, Curating, Connecting, and Culture. You'd have to be living under a rock not to notice that information technology has changed everything. The way you acquire, consume, process, and act on information has shifted radically. Knowledge of products and services, how-to's and where-to's, used to be provided through limited channels with content tightly controlled by their sources. Advertisements, pushed out under brands and with promises crafted by those seeking your spending dollars, provided at the convenience of the issuer, were the primary source of information on options. Either that or sales people with expertise or access to that information.

78% of consumers trust peer recommendations. Only 14% trust advertisements.

That's now all turned upside down. The individual decides when to acquire the information, and who to acquire it from, often based on peer reviews. The best you can do now is influence. The three R's of modern influence marketing are Reach, Relevance, and Resonance. The good news is the potential reach is vastly expanded and accessible to all, small or large, individual or collective. And at very low cost, compared to advertising. The challenge lies in the relevance and, even more so, in the resonance. With so much information out there, through so many different online channels, making it relevant at the right time and in the right place requires deep understanding of the relevant audience, channels and platforms. Even more critical is the ability to create compelling content. It can't be just what the solicitor wants to present, it needs to be what the audience wants to know. And it needs to grab attention quickly. Within one screen. Preferably in visual format. Video or photo's. Enough written words to get the point across often take way too much time.

The average person has a :07 attention span. The average goldfish has :08.

The wholly grail, however, is resonance. If it doesn't resonate, it most often won't spread or lead to action. These days, to resonate above the din of all the competing noise, the message needs to connect emotionally. Broadcast media has figured that out. That's why they spend so much time in the fringes, trying to elicit emotional reactions. The value of their content depends on how much outrage, fear, sadness, joy, disbelief, they can generate. Otherwise viewers won't watch, and advertisers will continue their abandonment in favor of digital platforms.

24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation.

 In the last few years at 3M, I tried to champion all efforts to expand our presence in e-commerce and, at the end, on social media. Because the risk of alienating current partners in commerce was so significant, we did so conservatively. It's good these days to see the company so active in professional and consumer digital media, while adapting to the interests and priorities of millennials. Those interests should line up well with the historical values of the company (environmental awareness and pro-action, ethical business conduct, innovation and creativity, community awareness and participation, etc.).

In the meantime, here are some other interesting digital factoids I hope folks that seek my ever-depreciating counsel will consider:

  • 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. met via social media
  • U.S. Department of Education revealed that online students out-performed those receiving face to face instruction.
  • 80% of companies use social media for recruitment
  • Generation Y & Z consider e-mail passe'.
  • In the time it takes to read this, over 100 hours of video will have been uploaded to YouTube.
  • Wikipedia has over 15 million articles. Studies show it's as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica.
  • There are over 200,000,000 blogs.
  • Kindle eBooks outsold paper books on Christmas.
  • 350 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day.
  • Over 8 zettabytes (8 followed by 21 zero's) of unique data created worldwide in 2015, more than the previous 5000 years combined.
  • The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years.
  • More than half of what technical students learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.
  • Mobile devices drive over 50% of all e-commerce traffic.

Quotes highlighted in blue in this post come from one of these video sources: 




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