Future of paper and packaging industry 1 conference ...

Future of paper and cardboard packaging in China, India, emerging markets, America and the EU. Impact of new technology on paper use. Newsprint market and newspaper readership trends -- decline in EU, growth in India. Use of paper and cardboard in Africa. Growth of middle class consumers. Future of newspapers, magazines and books. Paperless office trends -- reality. Paper consumption per person per year. Global market for paper. Exports newsprint from Russia, South America, India and China. Future of logistics, supply chain management, packaging and distribution. Energy costs in paper industry. Video on future of paper industry by Futurist Patrick Dixon, conference keynote speaker for Paper Industry conference in Sweden. Future of forestry and sustainable forestry -- link to paper industry. Verifiable forestry, reduction in energy use, chemical use, water use. Growth of online advertising revenues and fall of traditional advertising. Future of online newspapers and news sources. RFID technology in supply chain and intelligent packaging plus intelligent paper. Advantages of paper -- resolution, contrast, convenience, able to write on it. Future of plastics and competition with paper and cardboard in food and drink industry. Manufacturing demand for packaging. Resuseable cartons and recycling. Paperless office? Why paperless offices slow in coming. Future of direct mail and future of paper directories. Biological reasons why paper reading speed faster than screens. Human eye bandwidth and brain processing speed. Electronic books and digital paper. Why books and other paper products will have longer life than people think.
Paper industry, packaging, cardboard, recycling, forests, forestry, newspapers, magazines, books, future, sustainable, sustainability, energy, paperless, intelligent, rfid, plastics

Radio advertising needs a rethink

While great TV advertising can rank with short films for entertainment value, it is really hard to match that quality in sound alone on radio, using just a few seconds.  That is why radio audiences get bored so much more rapidly with often-repeated radio ads.

 

The answer of course is variety rather than quality. For example making a series of 20 compelling reasons to buy a product (randomly broadcast, and not numbered).  Radio advertising at best is more about information than entertainment. This is a words and sound effects channel, and sound effects can be really irritating after a while, as well as an odd voice or anything else originally designed to catch attention.

 

Do it once, do it twice, but don’t let people hear it a thousand times unless you have something they really need to hear again… just keep the content fresh.

Future of mailshots and direct marketing

More than 30 million people in the US opted out of direct mail within the first 6 weeks of having the chance to do so.

Direct mail needs to be ultra-personal to succeed.

The charity I started back in 1988 (AIDS charity ACET) decided to send out a mailing to 3500 people who had given to us recently, thanking them, giving them news and the opportunity to give again.

We have a great story: all our overheads are paid or given by volunteers and because we are ultra efficient we are able to feed an orphan for a month in a place like Zimbabwe for just $1-50.

In Ukraine we have seen 100,000 pupils in 12 months in a programme costing less than $25,000 a year.

But how do you get people to open the mailing in the first place? All the evidence shows that the best opening rates come when people don't know what is inside and it looks personally sent.

Well we hand-filled the envellopes using volunteers, and stuck ordinary stamps. We used a window to the address appeared on the letter - and I personally signed plus wrote comments on more than 450.

We will see what happens, but already the responses are coming in less than 48 hours after we posted them all out.

More than 200 million blogs - threat to brand management

More than 200 million people now keep a web diary of their own and their collective opinions are now a force to be reckoned with when it comes to brand protection and development of an advertising campaign.

Their collective voice is generating over 100 million pages every day of comment on a wide range of issues, many of which involve products and services people use.

For a long time now community sites like tripadvisor have been influencing consumer behaviour, yet many large corporations have hidden their heads in the sand, not really knowing how to respond.

While tripadvisor is not a blog, it is an example of what happens when hundreds of thousands of consumers start to share experiences online and the results can be devastating.

Just type in the name of a large hotel into Google and see who comes up highest - the official hotel site or the traveladvisor page with comments from people who have recently stayted there? And then the question is who do online readers trust the most? Answer: the majority of people trust community comment more than official advertising.

When community comments are loud and negative, corporations are probably wasting their time with expensive sites and online advertising campaigns.

The age of spin and hype is over. The third millennium is about revelation, reality and shared experience.

That's why so many companies are now quietly asking their own staff to go onto blogs and bulleting boards as well as other community sites to post nice positive comments, pretending to be customers.

It is just the start of a new era in advertising, branding and product promotion.

The lesson is this: get the product right every time and the online community will help sell it for you at zero cost. Get it wrong and you'll rapidly be out of the game. While that has to some extent always been true, in future brand elevation and destruction will happen faster than many marketing teams can even plan a campaign.