Digital Communications in a Digital World for a Digital Audience

If you’re like me, the headline alone makes your eyeballs roll back in your head. I’m a print guy. I love the tactile. I have to pick it up, touch it, experience it in all its feelingsy-feelingness.

And here I am, creating digital ads for a digital world. Because “print is dead,” right?

Guess again.

Years ago, my partners and I formed 989Group specializing in creative marketing solutions for higher education, not-for-profits, arts organizations and others. Today, our client base has expanded to include tech startups, publishers, financial solutions, medical equipment, and more. It is rewarding and inspiring most days.

We, like everyone else, have learned how to pivot our company (and our lives) to include complete digital strategies, also. The fact that I publish a blog on a digital platform is a sign that we have evolved. But we’ve never forgotten the hand-holdable, lovely printed materials my heart so enjoys.

That’s why my eyes were dazzled and my heart warmed by a recent arrival in my mailbox. (For you young ones- a mailbox is that thing on the exterior of your dwelling, where a uniformed official delivers targeted communication nearly every day.)

It was midday in early winter, when I stepped away from my laptop, set down my hot cup of coffee and traversed to the curb to retrieve the stack of bills, catalogs and flyers from my mailbox.

On the way back to my front door, one specific piece of mail caught my eye.

I made my way inside, set most of the pieces down, and began to thumb through this weighty, magazine-sized catalog of sorts.

“What exactly is this?” I pondered.

The paper was heavy and natural, almost butcher-paper weight. The cover was deeply saturated hues of reds, blues and golds in an original illustration depicting a diverse group of hands all raised to signify, “pick me.” Or, at least, that is what it said to me.

Inside, there were more than 100 pages of colorful illustrations, inspiring photographs and paragraph after paragraph of text, all promoting — wait for it — online programming.

You read that correctly.

A very significant, very high-profile university located somewhere near Silicon Valley delivered to my home an invitation to partner with them in learning. Higher Education — all online, mind you — where I could better myself and grow in the humanities, fine arts, and more.

A class in Italian Renaissance Art? An online course on Mindful Living and Overcoming Fears?

Yes, please.

But, why in the world would they spend such significant dollars promoting their online programs through print? After all- it is online programming.

The courses are all completely online. Shouldn’t they be focusing their efforts in online advertising? Maybe build a bot to send the customer exactly what they want, when they go looking for it? Send an email. Pay to follow me around social media. These are all the tactics they should have deployed to find me.

But they sent a catalog.

What a waste of money. Right? What a waste of time. Right? What irony. Right? Or…

Oh, sure — they sent me emails too. All deleted now. Most unread. And they follow me all over social media. Almost every day, their posts “happen” upon my searches. But I usually just scroll on by.

But the catalog. It is still here. Sitting, glowing, begging me to thumb it just once more. It seems to be saying, “It’s okay if you don’t look at me today. I’ll be here tomorrow.”

Here’s what I think. They know how important it is to allow the customer to read, in their own time, at their own pace, the materials they have created. Perhaps they even understand how vital it is to engage the prospective student in spending some significant time with their institution, before making the decision to simply scroll past or move on.

The catalog sits on my desk as I write this. I have kept it, and I ntend to keep it. It is still so enticing to me. I have had it for weeks, and I am still considering engaging in a course or two.

Skeptics would say, “but you haven’t enrolled in their classes.”

Yet.

But as long as I keep this catalog, this beautiful piece of printed material on my desk, in my backpack, or on my nightstand, it is still a possibility.

And, as a print guy, that’s exactly what I see in printed materials — Limitless, Endless Possibilities.