When Big Brother Watches YouTube With the Rest of Us: Digital Divide 2.0

Ahhhh, technophobia! No, I didn’t make this term up nor is it an irrational fear of a certain musical genre that will remain nameless (though obvious). Technophobia as defined by dictionary.com is “an abnormal fear of or anxiety about the effects of advanced technology.”

With this definition in mind, tech journalist Bill Robinson, a friend and colleague of mine, in his recent Huffington Post column, raised alarm over what he calls the new “digital divide.” No longer is the digital divide over the technological haves and have nots – those who have computers and Internet access versus those who don’t – but rather between those who have become outright addicted to our anywhere and everywhere gadget-gorged world and in so doing, are dividing themselves from the shrinking percentage of those who are living slightly off the digital grid, achieving that increasingly lost something we used to call: balance.

While some might say Bill is off his digital rocker, a real-life “Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel,” (Google that, if you don’t know what I’m referencing) I do not. Besides, anyone who was a true technophobe in keeping with the spirit of the definition that framed this piece, would not be posting their thoughts on the Huffington Post.

That said, Bill’s concerns that just maybe we’re all a little too linked, synched and wired is more than a just his conclusion. To buttress his argument, Robinson sites a recent survey by Morgan Stanley that found that 91 percent of Americans have their cell phones within reach at every moment of the day. Just to clarify, that means every 86,400 seconds that make up a 24-hour day. (And yes, I used a Blackberry app to calculate that) The study also found that our collective time spent with our glowing gadgets is outpacing the time we spend asleep.

What a sad bunch of folks we are.

Bill isn’t a technophobe any more than I am. We’re both realists. As a public relations professional and journalist, we interface with the latest and greatest technology on a daily basis. Not only that, but very often communications technology, increasingly in the form of mobile and smartphone adoption, is at the core of what we do.

Navigating this new digital divide successfully doesn’t require an online search engine. All it requires is a dose of common sense, and the recognition that being a hopeless technophile – the opposite of the definition that opened this piece, is just as detrimental as the technophobic response.

To be sure, changing habits takes time and marketers from every corner continue to promote technology’s hyperactive presence. But tonight, when you’re finished reading this post off what will still likely be your Blackberry, Android, iOS device or laptop, remember to power down, turn off, or put your gadgets to sleep and join the remaining 9 percent of Americans that presumably do not have their mobile phone in constant reach. I have a sneaking suspicion that doing so will not only recharge their batteries, but it’ll recharge yours as well.

Sweet dreams.

98 Percent of Statistics Are Made Up – And Then Some

“A [person] may have six meals one day and none the next, making an average of three meals a day, but that is not a good way to live.”

Nor is it a good way to use statistics.

The above words, attributed to US Supreme Court Associate Justice, Louis Brandeis, underscore the age-old trouble with this black sheep cousin of fully respected mathematics; a discipline we call statistics. For as much as statistics attempt to illuminate an issue, address a concern, highlight a trend, or flesh out a public opinion, statistics are as ambiguous as they are helpful. As a public relations professional, I estimate that 40% of my workweek (sorry, I couldn’t resist) is spent awash in statistics, some good, some bad, and many that leave me wondering “huh?!”

A new study by marketing company, Ifbyphone, has me doing just that. In its 2011 State of Marketing Measuring Report, the company found that while 82% of marketing executive managers expect all marketing channels, (print, TV, radio, mobile, online, email) to have a measurable return on investment, (ROI) only a paltry 29% of respondents said they understood how to measure and achieve that aim across all channels, with offline platforms being the most difficult to measure.

So does that mean the other 71% who admit to not having a clue deserves to go back to statistics 101?

Not necessarily.

For as earthshaking as pronouncements such as these sound, when you dig a little deeper, the gap really isn’t that surprising after all. Besides, don’t most effective bosses set the bar high and on occasion, leave their staffers scrambling to rise to the challenge at hand? It’s also not surprising since measuring ROI has long been marketers Holy Grail. How exactly does one measure word-of-mouth? Where is the hard money guarantee that a multichannel public relations campaign was any more successful than performing a mass emailing or any other type of initiative for that matter? In economics that’s called opportunity cost.

But in marketing, opportunity cost is a lot harder to measure.

The good news is that with the exception of social media – the online world’s digital word-of-mouth – 59% of respondent said offline media was the hardest metric to track. Why is that the good news you ask? Because as we begin 2012, Internet and mobile web marketing continues to gobble up a greater percentage of the marketing mix. Not in a cannibalistic manner, but in a complimentary one to traditional channels. Feature and mobile smartphones, with a combined penetration rate of 95%, (if you believe that statistic) offer some of the best marketing metric tracking ability including click and redemption rates, surveys, opt-in, and others. Already, it is estimated that US companies spend 30% of their marketing budgets online.

So while I wouldn’t dismiss a report like this and cry statistical BS, I’d be sure to keep an open mind whenever the topic of statistics comes up.

Or, to personalize it some more think about it like this:

I could tell you that statistically speaking; I recently placed my 2.59 children on board a plane back to England following the holiday break. I could tell you that because that’s the average size of an American family.

I could tell you that. But when it comes to my family I’d be telling a nearly six-tenths lie.

Go figure. (Pun intended)