{"id":2133,"date":"2020-10-20T14:18:53","date_gmt":"2020-10-20T18:18:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalgia.ink\/?p=2133"},"modified":"2020-10-20T14:18:53","modified_gmt":"2020-10-20T18:18:53","slug":"revenge-of-analog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/daviesis.io\/postalgia\/revenge-of-analog\/","title":{"rendered":"The Revenge of Analog"},"content":{"rendered":"

Life is moving online\u2014so why are so many of us going offline? The Revenge of Analog explains why.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re a literary junkie, you know there\u2019s been a quiet civil war raging among the community of book-lovers. At the core of this conflict is a sacred question\u2014would you ever peruse a book using an e-reader? Is a book really a book if it isn\u2019t on paper? On one side are those who appreciate the practicality of their Kindles and Kobos. No wonder why. They make books more affordable, take up less space than shelves, and are easier to travel with.<\/p>\n

And the other side of the divide? To them, it isn’t a practical argument. To them, the sanctity of the paper book is spiritual.<\/p>\n

Consider comments in this Reddit thread<\/a> explaining why users prefer paper books:<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the feeling of a good book in my hands.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThere is nothing more satisfying than opening a new book and getting the honour of breaking the spine.”<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing withered spines and taped covers makes me smile, and I like to think the reader is reliving so many memories just from that one book.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Note the commonalities. \u201cFeeling,\u201d \u201copening,\u201d \u201cbreaking the spine\u201d\u2014these describe the physicality of the book. They say: Nothing compares to the experience of touch. Touch is connected to memory, and especially to good memories. Touch becomes the doorway to the soul.<\/p>\n

The sanctity of touch is the theme of David Sax’s 2016 bestseller, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter.<\/em> The book explores a contradiction in the digital revolution. At a time when most of life is moving online, more and more consumers are showing a clear preference for analog\u2014or physical\u2014alternatives. Essentially, things they can hold in their hands\u2014and how feeling things makes them better. Where a Google calendar offers efficiency, a paper calendar offers beauty. Where a Facetime call provides convenience, a conversation over coffee creates intimacy. Where digital can feel distant, the physical feels closer\u2014even in the case of a handwritten letter, where the sender can live far away.<\/p>\n

Sax chronicles the analog revolution through anecdotes that would make Malcolm Gladwell smile. He opens with the unexpected resurgence of vinyl records<\/a>. Sales reached half a billion dollars in 2015\u2014the highest level since the late 1980s. Vinyl is an experience of music that feels “heartfelt, raw, and organic,” says Sax. “You watch the record spin, and it\u2019s like you\u2019re sitting around a campfire,” one musician tells him. “It\u2019s hypnotic.\u201d And hypnotism remains a face-to-face art.<\/p>\n

Do you think this anti-digital vengeance comes from older demographics pining for simpler times\u2026 a Bingo club of \u201cYou kids, get off my lawn\u201d consumers? You’d be wrong. Those now dipping their toes in analog grew up bathing in digital products: Millennials and other young consumers. They are driving the success of analog alternatives like old-school Polaroid cameras with built-in printers.<\/p>\n

Our favourite part of the analog trend is what it reveals about our enduring love of good old-fashioned paper. For instance, beyond books, Sax raises the hopeful future of magazines<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe newer magazines that are succeeding today, publications like Kinfolk and Monocle magazines, they\u2019re saying, \u2018Okay, we might have a few ads in here, but we\u2019re really not dependent on ads in the way that time and Newsweek and Vanity Fair is. We depend on your subscription dollars. If you like it, you pay for the subscription, you pay for each issue, and it\u2019s going to cost you more than those Sports Illustrated things, and we\u2019re not sending you a football phone. You\u2019re going to pay for this, but you\u2019re going to get something that\u2019s a high quality and that you\u2019ll like and it won\u2019t feel as disposable\u2019. And if enough people think that, then, that\u2019s a business.<\/em><\/p>\n

In our industry, we at Postalgia see the paper preference at play with the power of direct mail<\/a>. From the huge plurality of consumers who look forward to checking the mail to the ways direct mail gets better response rates than comparable digital marketing, we see paper\u2019s incomparable capacity to create an emotional connection between you and your stakeholders. Forging a connection in a way that digital marketing hasn\u2019t yet matched.<\/p>\n

This is why the paper preference is so powerful. Paper creates relationships. We\u2019ve seen that during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the enormous proliferation of pen pal groups and letter-writing among family members as an antidote to social isolation<\/a>\u2014and in contrast, how draining the endless Zoom meetings can be.<\/p>\n

Nowadays we hear a lot about disruption\u2014and that the only way to be disruptive is digital. Today, the opposite is true. The revolution of analog products is on. This revolution won\u2019t be televised\u2014it will be handwritten on paper you can hold in your hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Life is moving online\u2014so why are so many of us going offline? The Revenge of Analog explains why. If you\u2019re a literary junkie, you know there\u2019s been a quiet civil…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7399,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[34,20,10,11,26],"class_list":["post-2133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-analog","tag-business-development","tag-direct-mail","tag-handwritten-letters","tag-sales"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Revenge of Analog - Postalgia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As life moves online, analog experiences like paper books, vinyl records, and handwritten letters are surging in popularity. Why? 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