Changing the mindset: From Granny Smith to Steve Jobs
The Granny Smith book published recently brought an insight into a world seemingly from the 1950s. A world more akin to ‘Open all Hours’ than to today’s fast moving and ‘connected’ world. In the last couple of weeks there has been a huge hype around the Apple iPad and I got to thinking what would an iLetter look like?
The iPad, if you believe Apple’s hype, is going to change the way we see documents – everything will be delivered via a two-dimensional screen, textbooks, bank statements, and communications. This world, for many, seems exciting and ‘sexy’, however, I believe that this trend is likely to falter as the screen has no emotional connection for the reader of whatever the message is.
The ‘tech’ world is a very logical place that does not cater for our analogue side and although there will be a massive take up of this new way of reading, I think that our basic need to satisfy this emotional side will take us back to paper over time. My own experience with the Amazon Kindle has been interesting. I bought a Kindle in the US whilst I was working out there to enable me to get UK newspapers at a relatively low cost and delivered when they were published – for me at 7am in the morning. This was great and I ‘consumed’ this with vigour, however when it came to reading books the story was different – yes, I bought and read books on the Kindle, but 6 out of 10 times I ended up buying the book as well!
So going back to the iPad and the iLetter – yes, there will be a whole traunch of services which will deliver letters to iPad-type devices, but in the long-term I am not convinced that they will replace the emotional impact that a physical letter/book/greetings card etc. can have.
So should companies embrace the iLetter, and if so, how? Well we could see the re-emergence of hybrid mail services to serve this new channel and at last there could be a business model that sees value for the operators. With more and more people prepared to pay for ‘tech’ services, there may be a mindset change which would create the environment that finally gets the receiver to pay, as well as the sender of the mail!
What do you think the iLetter should be? Do you think that there will be a mindset change that will allow hybrid mail services to flourish? Or is this going to be the last nail in the coffin for physical mail?
