Another sign of an aging population

While not every senior citizen I know is technology-challenged, here's more evidence that would seem to support older Americans are behind the times.
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YOU'VE GOT MAIL! NOT!
While many people check their Blackberrys seemingly every five minutes for new emails, roughly one-fifth of all U.S. heads-of-household have never sent or used an e-mail. According to National Technology Scan, a forthcoming study from Parks Associates, 20 million U.S. households are still without Internet access and approximately 18% of all households don’t use email.
The research indicates that 21% of heads of households have never sent or received an email and another 21 percent were found to have never looked up a website or browsed for information online. “Nearly one out of three household heads has never used a computer to create a document,” said John Barrett, director, research, Parks Associates. “These data underscore the significant digital divide between the connected majority and the homes in the unconnected minority that rarely, if ever, uses a computer.”
Age and education are factors in this divide. One-half of those who have never used e-mail are over 65, and 56 percent had no schooling beyond high school.
The survey also found just seven percent of the 20 million “disconnected” homes plan to subscribe to an Internet service within the next 12 months. Still, the study reports a steady decline in the number of disconnected households when comparing findings with previous years. National Technology Scan reported at year-end 2006 that 29% of all U.S. households (31 million homes) did not have Internet access, citing low perceived value of the Internet.

"Dave Trippin Through NKY"

Northern Kentucky is among the areas featured in a day tripper's guide through Appalachia by Huntington Herald Dispatch Reporter Dave Lavender and his wife Toril. In addition to Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio are featured.

In the section, highlighted as NEWPORT, Lavender spends 11 pages talking about a variety of attractions throughout Northern Kentucky including Newport on the Levee and nearby stops in historic Newport, Mainstrasse Village and some of the more rural highlights of the area (Rabbit Hash and its General Store and Big Bone Lick State Park).

Dave also highlights places to stay such as the Radisson Riverfront the Wildwood Inn. As an aside, Dave has an affinity for this area serving as a summer intern journalist in his more formative years.

I highly recommend the book especially as you may be pinching pennies this summer and not wanting to venture too far from home. You can order it online at www.davetrippin.com or www.jsfbooks. You can also get it through Amazon.

Motivating the Workforce

Kip Knight in his recent address to the Cincinnati AMA Chapter also talked about the ways that organizations can leverage the power of all employees:

1. Cultivating a culture of being open/closed minded;
2. Rewarding new ideas;
3. Leveraging Internet 2.0;
4. Gathering consumer insight;
5. Utlizing Consumers as Editors;
6. Giving up control;
7. There will be blood (for every success, there are many failures so innovate and move or risk being out marketed).

Listening to Customers

I recently had the chance to hear Kip Knight, Vice President of North American Marketing for eBay speak as a guest of the Cincinnati Chapter of the American Marketing Association. Kip is contemplating writing a book he would entitle The Power of All of Us exploring how individuals in communities matter in the online world. This will be the first of two entries on Kip's talk--it was so rich with good content. He referred to the three V's eBay uses in hearing from their customers:

Voices- the company brings users to U.S. Headquarters in California and places them in focus groups to hear their views;

Visits- eBay actually visits (with permission) users homes to see the steps they take to sell items;

Views-on a quarterly basis, focus groups of users are polled on industry-related questions such as security.

Perhaps the methods described above by Kip will help you to gain meaningful information from your customers or stakeholders.

Nominating Better Than Winning

I was thrilled to learn this week that a friend I had nominated for the national American Marketing Association Volunteer of the Year award beat out 30 other competitors for the award. It sounds rather strange that you would use the word competition in the same sentence for an award comparing the merits of people doing different yet significant things to better the world. In this case, the person was Carol Shea who served as Cincinnati AMA Chapter President in 1992. She went on to serve in distinction in helping to start AMA's national market research bootcamp and even served as the AMA liaison to the U.S. Post Office. Carol was very deserving of this honor but despite all the pride and appreciation she expressed to me for nominating her, I sort of felt like I was the bigger winner. It brought back to me the importance of showing honor and appreciation for those who professionally and personally guide us along our paths in life. Here's what I wrote about Carol in my nomination.

Carol has always taken time to counsel chapter members who followed in her footsteps. Personally, she has taken an active interest in my career and aspirations as I ascended the chapter leadership track. Sympathetic, compassionate and wise are three words, which exemplify Carol Shea’s spirit, a spirit that resonates throughout our community serving as a strong foundation for Cincinnati’s stature as a chapter those within the AMA family respect and admire.

I hope this story inspires you to take an extra moment to acknowledge the unique gifts each of us brings to brighten the world around us and help make our paid and unpaid ventures worthwhile.

History Over Cocktails

One of the latest and greatest after-hours meeting destinations in Northern Kentucky for convention or corporate groups is the The Grand At Madison, located at Fifth Street and Madison Avenue, Covington. It's a five minute walk from the Northern Kentucky Convention Center and is located in the historic and recently renovated Odd Fellows Hall. The history of the place provides an interesting backdrop for chatting during drinks and appetizers:

• It was the center of Covington's civic and political life for most of the Victoria Era.
• When the Civil War ended, victorious Union General Ulysses S. Grant was honored at a reception there.
• In 1900, the body of William Goebel, the only U.S. Governor to be assassinated in office, laid in state there as an estimated 10,000 filed past.
• In the 1950s, a roller skating rink filled the second floor ballroom, famous for its 25-foot-high ceiling suspended by a truss system.
• In May 2002, a major fire almost destroyed the entire building and sparked a five year massive renovation.

For more information: www.kycater.com

Check out this short video.

Email for young and old alike

For those trying to reach younger audiences for meetings or events should email be forsaken for texting, Facebook and other more seemingly relevant social media for that age-group? That's a vexing question for experts smarter than me.
http://blogs.mediapost.com/email_insider/?p=
But I tend to agree with this post relative to my experience with our Cincinnati American Marketing Association Chapter. For instance, Wednesday, we hosted our monthly Word of Mouth Shared Interest Group. We generally average attendance of 10-15 each month. However, armed with a strong email list and a minor mention in the newspaper business calendar section, we had a mob on our hands with 51 showing up to hear a treatise on the power of Linked In. I asked our lead facilitator Rob Bunting (cincyimg.typepad.com) about his thoughts of the power of email. He remarked that while Facebook and other social media outlets have millions of subscribers, email is universal. In fact, you're starting to see many business cards do away with fax numbers in favor of email.

I also asked Will Krieger, who heads up the Cincinnati AMA Young Professionals Group, if he uses any of the social networking tools to attract the two dozen or so YPs that gather at their monthly events. Nope, it's all email.

It also occurs to me that the pressure to conform to a more standard communication form faces recent college graduates when they enter their first job. Most of their older colleagues just began using cell phones in the past decade so the question of whether they want contextual advertising on their phones is laughable.

So it appears that the death of email as it relates to younger emerging audiences is about as true as the immediate demise of print advertising.