February 19, 2007

This Google crowd is really pulling my chain. I click 'post the comments,' and they seem to post what they feel like posting. They must have something better to do...like start reading those 32 million books.

Ida, I agree that we're probably not going to be reading the about Natasha and Pierre on our computer screens. At least I certainly hope not. But what if you could read enough about them that you wanted to get the book and then - as a dear friend of mine used to do - read Tolstoy's classic every year. What a treat.

Nabokov wrote that we should read a book three times: first to follow the story, a second time to understand the subtleties of the story, and a third time to appreciate its full meaning.

I just read Dan Pink's "A Whole New Mind," in which he says the search for meaning is an integral part of what he calls the Conceptual Age...the age that follows the Information Age. We seek now, according to Pink, less materialism in our lives and more meaning. I believe that's true. As the Boomers turn 60, their pockets reasonably full of material possessions, they seem to seek more meaning. And meaning comes - in part - through contemplation and commitment...taking the time to engage with a piece of literature or a painting or a person.

I think those 32 million titles on Google will be a catalyst of curiosities, providing information, insight and possibilities to everyone with a keyboard...and that, hopefully sooner rather than later, will be everyone.

But I completely agree that the computer will not be the sole source of our visual material. Newspapers, for example, can always have a place in our lives, as books most certainly will. The reports of newspapers' death, like Mark Twain's, have been greatly exaggerated.

Another advantage of making books available online is the expansion of available titles. I don't know about you, but I'm sick of seeing the same limited number of titles at book stores. Talk about 'tip of the iceberg!'

Gifts that Keep on Giving

Someone asked me the other day about advertising ROI. It's a subject that keeps coming up. We've studied it, read books on it, and made all kinds of arguments for it...but, at the end of the day, who really knows?

The Super Bowl spots, for example, have a life on the Super Bowl...but then they have a much longer - and larger - life on the Internet and in other media. I didn't mind the two guys kissing, but that chest hair business frankly looked painful...and ridiculous. But pain seemed to be the currency this year, what with those guys slapping one another in the Bud spot. Whatever. Point is the spots get talked about and played many, many times more than the original 'buy.'

I think it was in this morning's Times that I read that 20 million people watched the Golden Globes, but then the next day 39 million people checked them out on People Magazine's website.

The afterburn has become more powerful than the original rocket launch. And any attempt at responsible ROI analysis becomes moot.