Graphic design in the print field looks set to hit the wall.

It increasingly looks deviod of ideas. We seem to have reached logo saturation and the general quality of print design has a depressing sameness about it. 

Obviously, I’m speaking in broad, general terms, but take a look at print marketing material and, with notable exceptions, I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t provoke a “ho hum’ reaction.

Without even considering the increasing demise of the print medium, such as newsletters, flyers and even newspapers, it stands to reason that there are a finite number of ways that type, images and logos etc can be arranged on a page and a document.  That number is  high, but it’s still finite.

The evolution of desktop publishing programs that ‘dumb down’  output to  a bland template style – somewhat like website content management systems – has obviously played a role in the “yawn factor’ facing print design.  Using the modern ‘out-of-the-box’ publising programs is not rocket science ….. and the finished product increasingly seems to be reflecting that fact.

Of course, technology and the social web in particular offers salvation for the print graphic designer.  The only problem is that this is a whole new ‘Gen Y’ world in which the ‘First, we need a logo’ thinking so central to Marketing 101 is redundant.

Inventing a new font every month and stretching the uses of Photoshop to its limits may keep the wolves at bay for a while, but it certainly won’t hold back the tide.  Graphic art exhaustion may be looming.

For months, I’ve been commenting on the trend away from destination websites.

The figures have been there to prove it.  But, for many, the demise of the corporate website just seemed too hard to believe. 

Now, the issue has started to become a hot topic across the social web.  Check these latest statistics put forward by blogger Doug Brown

Again, I’d suggest a long hard think about the direction of your organisation’s digital communications, especially if you are considering spending money on a new or existing corporate website.

Ian

I’m increasingly amazed at much of today’s marketing.

Many of the traditional marketers that I meet are quick to criticise PR people as snakeoil salesmen, yet a big question mark hangs over their own methods.

Traditional marketing often doesn’t bother listening to people or genuinely engaging with them.  For some reason, there is too often an assumption that marketers automatically know what people want to hear and see.

And, in reality, the ‘message’ mindset and methods or channels used by marketers are becoming totally inadequate in a changing media mix. Yet, in many areas, there seems to be a reluctance or inability to change and adapt – to understand that traditional advertising and newsletters may no longer be breaking through …. and to abandon the ‘my logo is bigger than yours’ thinking.

As someone put it very succinctly recently … “far better to be willing to engage people in actual conversations — which is what social media allows us to do. It humanizes communications — and gives us an outstanding opportunity to gather market intelligence as a value-add”.

As I’ve said before, social media is not simply another tool in the marketer’s bag, but a culture change.  And, of all people, it is particularly sad to see traditional marketers who either don’t get it, or refuse to move with the times.

Ian

This is big:  From tomorrow, Twitter users will be able to make free phone calls to and from each other .

Daniel Terdiman, of CNET News, says a system developed by Internet systems provider, Jajah, “will allow Twitter users to have two-way voice chat with other users by typing “@call @username”–where “username” is someone’s Twitter ID–into any Twitter client. “

During a trial period,  the calls will be limited to two minutes, but the company will evaluate that length. However, it sees the two minute period–after which the call will end–as “the verbal equivalent of a tweet.”

Daniel says  the service will allow a user to place a call to any other user, so long as the second person follows the first on Twitter and both have Jajah accounts. The service is free to use and is expected to work on any Twitter-enabled device, from PCs to smart phones.

One important element of the service is that users can keep their phone numbers private, yet be able to have voice chats with just about anyone on Twitter. To be sure, since the calls are initiated by one person, the recipient may well not be online, or may choose to ignore the call if they don’t want to talk.”

News of the service has swept through Twitter users in the past 24 hours – and certainly seems to be a big development.

Want an example of how the speed and spread of social media is making traditional communications largely redundant?

After being refused  ‘drive through’ service at a fast food outlet because she was on a bicycle, US writer, Sarah Gilbert, immediately complained on Twitter.

A few minutes later, she was contacted by a local newspaper reporter who had seen the  Twitter post.  Two hours later, she was interviewed on local TV news.  And, all the while, Twitter users were spreading the issue far and wide in huge numbers – using the viral spread of the micro-blogger to ‘name and shame’ the outlet involved.

By the next morning, Sarah had received an apology from the food outlet’s manager.  Within hours, the company had gone on Twitter and other media to announce a new bike-friendly policy at all of its drive-through windows.

The national newspaper, USA Today had been watching the social media storm — and quickly arranged an interview with both Sarah and the food chain – followed by the LA Times newspaper; the local newpaper again; bloggers; and breakfast radio hosts.

In the past, the company would probably have taken out a newspaper advertisement to stem the tide of dissent and unveiled its new policy with brochures, flyers and newsletters:  well meaning but too slow for this new era.

Things have changed

Ian

A new chapter in the Twitter story is underway.

Businesses world-wide are starting to use the microblogger in huge numbers – far more than any other social media service.

Influential blogger, Robert Scoble, believes this unprecedented  business adoption will propel Twitter to new heights: adding brand promotion to the list of reasons why people are using the service: reasons such as real time searching and building and nurturing communities.

‘Twitter is winning, big time,” says Scoble.

See his full post.

Ian

Some interesting figures:

78% of US consumers trust peer recommendations 

But only 14% trust advertisements

And less than 20%  of traditional TV campaigns now generate a positive return on investment

24 of the 25 biggest newspapers in the US are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.

80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences? 

Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama.

In China, social media site  ‘Qzone’ now has more than 300 million users – and in RussiaVkontakte.ru is growing at an enormous rate.  

Would you believe that 80% of companies questioned in the US say they now use LinkedIn as a key tool to find employees

Generation Y and Z are said to consider email an irrelevant Generation X tool.  In 2009, Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to new students.

There are now more than  200,000,000 Blogs – 54% of which are updated daily.

34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands

If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour

In the near future we will no longer search for  products and services they will find us via social media

Successful users of social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertisers or promoters.

Ian

Why would anyone automatically turn to press, radio, publications and television for promotion – when the Internet is now Australia’s most used media?

With that question, influential blogger, Mediahunter, recently touched on one of my pet subjects – if marketing wants to be taken seriously, then why is it generally stuck in the past.

Mediahunter continued in part:

“According to the 2009 Nielsen Annual Internet and Technology Report the average Australian spends 16.1 hours per week online. This is compared to TV at 12.0 hours per week, Radio at 8.8 hours, Video at 5.4 hours, Online radio at 4.6 hours, PC video at 4.6 hours, mobile at 3.7 hours, newspaper at 2.8 hours and magazines at 2 hours.

Hold on….Australians spend more time online than consuming TV & Newspaper combined? More time online than Radio, Newspaper and Magazines combined?

So the big question is: are your  resources being allocated to the right media?

Why does the average business automatically resort to TV / Radio/ Press when devising a marketing campaign?

Of course there are issues of target markets, cost-effectiveness and clutter with all media decisions, but I am alarmed by the number of businesses still marketing like it was 1999.

 If your customers are now spending more time online than they are consuming other media, shouldn’t you be allocating more of your marketing resources to online?

Shouldn’t you be trying to give potential customers as much great information as possible online to assist them in doing business with you?

Online is now your customer’s number one media priority…is it yours?”

Okay ‘marketing’ people explain why you shouldn’t be dismissed as dinosaurs.

I’ve often criticised government bureaucrats for hastening slowly with ’social media’.

But, to be fair, employers in both the public and private sectors are in unchartered waters, trying to adapt and apply traditional management methods to a change in general community behaviour.

There are no boundaries around what we are calling ’social media’: new connected communities are not  left behind when you enter the workplace. And nor should they be. This change in behaviour is a step forward with great benefits for  businesses and public bodies.

Admittedly, the questions for employers are many, as staff meld professional and personal lives as never before. And this is one issue that won’t go away.

Smart employers realise that such changing life practices will automatically affect work practices – and they must relinquish some of their traditional control. Employees equally must show utmost  professionalism and responsibility, worthy of the trust that underpins social media.

So called  ’charters of operation’ or ‘templates’ like those drawn up this week by the UK and US governments, in part, are rather painful attempts to impose  order (on the plus side, they do also contain some subtle and intelligent guides for clarifying responsibility)

But what is really needed is firstly an acceptance by both management and staff of the enormity of this behavioural change and the impact that it is having on life generally, including the workplace. If organisations tout their ‘values’,  then here is an opportunity to see them in action.

Then, with a recognition of what is actually happening, it should be easier to handle questions such as who is trusted with operating the workplace Twitter site;  who should nurture and liaise with the organisation’s connected community;  should there be a the line between professional and personal online life; and whether personal blogs and social media sites represent career development.

Crucially, these issues should not be decided and imposed in the traditional top-down management style, but should be the result of online collaboration in the spirit of social media.

After all, this type of change requires trust and acceptance of responsibility all round. Management is also feeling its way tentatively in this changed environment, so it shouldn’t carry all the weight.  In a social media world, it’s only fair that the buck stops at everyone’s desk.

Have a good weekend all.

Ian

Hands up those who read newsletters mailed from your local politicians.

Ha! I thought so.

Now, who reads government advertisements in newspapers?

Hmmmm.

That second question should probably have been “who still reads newspapers”, however the point of all this is still the same.

Bureaucrats simply transferring their old newsletter and marketing ‘thinking’ to the micro-blogger, Twitter, seems to me like two steps forward and one-and-a-half steps back.

The Twitter templates unveiled this week by the UK and US governments underwhelmed me, despite their complexity.  Fair enough, they get top marks for acknowledging that the times are a changing around them (governments here in Australia are a lot slower to see the bleeding obvious)

However, I believe that both the UK and US boffins either missed the point or refused to recognise that the change is largely about a new type of consultation – placing real and effective power in the hands of citizens, not simply maintaining a status quo via a new tool.

It will be great to see institutions Twittering, but not with an odour of red tape and unsubtle spin. For example, ‘clearing’ individual tweets to ensure they push the current positive message and reinforce the day’s media releases, may quickly destroy credibility and render the Twittering pointless.

One of the reasons we have something like Twitter is because the power of the digital age allows people to have a say  - and not just at election time.

Systems like Twitter are helping connect digital communities  of people with different interests, backgrounds and ages.  The hope of many is that the resulting conversations will bring greater resources, energy, aspirations and thinking to some of the social challenges that currently are proving either too big or too hard to solve.

Am I being unreasonably idealistic here – or is the reality that bureaucracies everywhere say only what their masters want to hear.

The changes being rung by social media are too important to become tangled in the business of government.  And, one way or another, the bureaucrats will need to accept that this is not something that they can control in their traditional way.  In fact, it’s all about releasing control.

I’m keen to see what you think?

Ian