Shaw & Todd - Advertising and Marketing Communications

American Business Media just put out their first half spending figures for business-to-business pubs and trade shows. Not surprisingly, there was a 6% decline in magazine spending. Trade show spending, on the other hand, only slowed by 1%. It’s this second number that interests me. Print advertising, as we all know, has been taking a back seat to digital for a while now, and with a constricting economy, there’s really no signs that this trend will reverse itself. Why aren’t trade shows declining at the same pace? Aren’t people too busy and budgets too tight? And can’t the information be found on the Web? I thought the virtual trade show and Second Life were supposed to signal the end of their real-life counterparts. Turns out we’re not quite there yet. While trade shows definitely aren’t the powerhouses they used to be, marketers don’t seem to be ready or willing to give them up as a means to interact with customers. We’re seeing it with our clients. As a whole, they’re not attending as many or spending as much, and there’s an ongoing debate over cost vs. benefit, but they continue to be a major factor in the marketing mix.

I’m being asked this question all the time, so I thought I’d again jot a few words down on the subject. The super-short answer is a resounding ‘YES!’. This thing we call social media is simply too widespread to be ignored (or avoided). It’s now yet another media tactic that needs to be utilized, whether you are delivering a message, soliciting feedback or trying to ascertain what people are saying about you. More and more B-to-Bers are going the viral video route (with mixed results; more on that in a future blog). But social media is so much more than creating a funny video and posting it to YouTube (more on that in a later post, as well).

A couple weeks ago, Boston-based communications group Cone released the results of a study they conducted that gauged whether Americans expect companies to have a presence in social media.

Some highlights:

• 43% said companies should use social networks to solve customers’ problems
  
• 41% said companies should solicit feedback on their products and services
  
• 37% said companies should develop new ways for consumers to interact with their brand
• Men are twice as likely as women to interact with companies via social media

There’s also a great presentation that Universal McCann made available awhile back that surveyed 17,000 Internet users from 29 countries. Some more interesting nuggets can be mined from this one, such as:

• 44% of people surveyed have a blog (compared to 28% in 2006)
• 57.5% have a page on a social network (compared to 27% in 2006)
• 69% visit brands’ official websites for product information
• 82% prefer to search for information on a search engine or to read people’s comments on personal profiles on social networks like Facebook

Stuff to sink your teeth into, to be sure.  Moral of the story? Get social media on your radar immediately. If you don’t know where or how to start, you can always contact Shaw & Todd.

Got to give it to the folks at Google. Not only do they have a sense of humor over there, but they know how to draw attention to the R&D efforts at Google Labs. Case in point: Google Goggles. I’m not saying I’m going to activate the feature (I’m way too composed to need such a thing), but I love the concept. Read all about it at the GMAIL BLOG.