Marketing and advertising efforts are always changing to keep up with the trends of the world. From giant billboards to painting the roads to look like the product they want you to buy, we always know there will be something new up the sleeves of the creative industry.

 

The biggest trends right now relate to “being green”, OOH, e-mail and other digital forms of grabbing your attention. Companies want you to know they are “green” and trying to save the planet while still getting you to want what they offer.

 

While going big and saving paper is amazing, think about what happens to these pieces of communication now that people are overloaded with it? We all do the same thing when we check our e-mail, for example. We delete the spam and anything else we know we don’t need. Well, there goes that creative piece of marketing that was worked so hard on and was never seen.

 

What am I getting at, you think? Well check out this image below. These stats are reinforcing the very fact that printing is still in huge demand and with our current advertising efforts of the world, maybe companies should go back to the table and analyze why, for instance, Direct Mail pieces have a higher call to action rate than e-mail.

 

Let’s face it, digital and OOH advertising is awesome, but holding a piece of Direct Mail has a better chance at letting the consumer know what it is they need to have, and it gives them more time to understand the information provided rather than driving by a billboard which gives less than 2 seconds of visual time.

 

I found this quite interesting because many companies focus on saving paper, but think about how many more impressions and potential profit would be gained from having that piece of Direct Mail! As Bernice Fitz-Gibbon quotes, “A good ad should be like a good sermon; it must not only comfort the afflicted, it must also afflict the comfortable”.

 

Signing off for now,

Natasha