Back to the future?

By Yvonne Buma on 12 February 2010

Not so long ago all you heard when you asked which communication method should be used to get the result you wanted from your communication efforts, was internet related methods. “I’ll send them an email. ’’Oh, you need a website.”  “Use Twitter.” Etc. etc. But there are all kinds of signals that old-fashioned methods are making a comeback.

What triggered this blog? The movie ‘Dear John’.  The new number one movie in the US. And contrary to Avatar there is no high tech in this movie. Only ‘low tech’. And surprising: old fashioned snail mail and the US Postal Service play a key role.

Are the old-fashioned ways of communicating making a comeback? Are we rediscovering the value of the good old handwritten letter, also called snail-mail? Are they are more romantic…. and will we be able to reread them again in the far future (do we keep our emails that long?).

Other signals? Our mailboxes are swamped with emails and newsletters. I know I throw most of them out before I have read them, just because it is too much. I don’t have the time to read them. I get the impression more and more people start to do the same. What was once a very effective way of communicating your message doesn’t seem to be that anymore. And the funny thing is that we get hardly any hardcopy mail. As it is more and more scarce we start paying attention to it again. Direct marketing letters that used to thrown out immediately are opened again. And thus becoming effective again.

Are magazines disappearing because of e-zines? I doubt it. We are publishing more and more magazines and professional print magazines are still a very important resource.  Easy to scan through, easy to pick up and browse the article you wanted to read. Okay, content needs to be interesting, but is that really different?

And finally: what is needed to get us to use tags on our mobile phones: yes, you guessed it: good old-fashioned direct mail and newspapers. At least that was my conclusion after the Labencounter on mobile communication last week

tagged with: print

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