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A Paperless Concert Programme? |
For the Millennials, reality only exists through the prism
of their smart phones and tablets. To
engage with them you must address them through their devices, and to achieve
this you need to understand that face to face, verbal and written interaction is
meaningless.
Not my words but those of a marketing guru whose
workshop on how to sell to the current generation of teens and
twenty-somethings I attended on the basis that I occasionally do some
advertising copy-writing and I wanted to get to understand how to communicate
with the modern tech-savvy generation from whom I feel totally detached.
Clearly what the guru had to say made good sense, and
armed with advice and guidance from one of the break-out sessions, I decided to
do my own bit of “engagement” by starting, for the first time, a Facebook account. Despite my protestations that I am a really
with-it bloke who knows modern technology so well that I can administer a blog
and, with a lot of trial and error, send a five word text message to the wrong
recipient, I was told that this is passé.
With the tiny, visually-driven attention-spans of the Millennials whose
world revolves around bite-sized morsels of dubious value (but elevated to importance
by the mere fact that they exist on social media), I needed to exist in short
sentences of such utter inanity that it would drive me mad but make me exist in
their world.
Twitter is a drop too far intellectually, but
Facebook, I was assured, would immediately ignite interest and growth. I would
be inundated with “friends” and my blog and other writings would experience a
sudden upsurge in traffic simply because of my recognised online existence.
Incredibly, this has turned out to be true. Aiming to be the most friendless person on Facebook,
I have accumulated them in their droves in the space of a week, and long lists
of complete nonentities of whose existence I have remained blissfully unaware
all my life, seem to be beating a path to my Facebook account to befriend
me.
Can I charge them a dollar each for the
privilege? Marketing guru’s assistant
thought not.
The problem is I have a life to lead and it seems
Facebook requires 24/7 attention (see, I am already writing like a true Millennial). I can spend time there only once every few
days, and good friends who leave messages give up when no reply is forthcoming
by return. So, sadly, while I’ll keep
the Facebook going (it’s been wonderful to be reminded of old friends and
heroes – Alyn Shipton and Barry Rose take me back through the mists of time) I
don’t expect I’ll be able to engage with Millennials – only those who, like me,
felt it was worth the effort (or, more likely, felt it was a way of pretending
to stay young).
However, since the marketing guru drew my attention to
the ways companies engage with Millennials, I’ve understood a lot more of what
they are doing.
Take, for example, the current trend to do away with
concert programme notes and, instead, put a bar code by the door of concert
halls and instruct audience members to scan it with their devices. Apparently, as if by magic, this brings up
the concert programmes on the screen of your device and you can happily sit in
the concert, staring at the illuminated screen (and distracting everyone else’s
attention from the action on stage), taking a few pictures and posting them on
Facebook while the concert’s going – and if the phone rings (which is unlikely –
Millennials, I was told, do not use the phone to make voice calls – ever) that’s
a small price to pay. Concert halls no longer
tell you to switch your phones and bleeping devices off – simply to turn them
to silent.
For weeks I berated the long-suffering staff at the Esplanade’s
Recital Studio, where this is now standard practice. Indoctrinated over the years to leave phones
behind when attending concerts, I now am told that I MUST have my phone to
experience the concert to the full. Now,
of course, I realise that this is for the benefit of Millennials for whom
reality only exists through the prism of the smartphone or tablet.
However, this was not what I was told by the
staff. They proudly proclaimed that the
whole reason for this policy of downloaded programme notes rather than printed
ones was their way of showing their concern for the environment.
Balls!
A few concert programmes printed on recycled paper
does far less damage to the environment than the precious rare metals used in
the manufacture of smart phones and tablets, the energy used to manufacture and
power them, and the irreparable harm to the natural world created when they are
discarded. Batteries leak, harmful acids
leach into the ground and plastic cases remain for thousands of years. If I wanted to protect the environment, I
would print programmes any day rather than encourage the usage of electronic
and digital devices.
So angry have I been at this appalling piece of
blatant hypocrisy, that I have vented my wrath on the issue tirelessly (and not
through Facebook) and, perhaps I, and others, have scored a minor victory. At last Sunday’s recital at the Esplanade
Recital Studio in which I was by far and away the oldest audience member – the next
being a colleague in his 30s who was, himself, twice the average age of the
rest of the audience - printed copies of
the programme were available to all who wanted them. I notice that even the fidgety kids who spent
the concert texting on their smartphones, all had chosen the hard copy
programme above the downloaded one.
May this continue.
By all means, attract the Millennials by addressing them through their
devices, but please accept that some of us are not Millennials and in our huge,
dinosaurian ignorance, we prefer something rather more tangible than a small
illuminated screen to help us get to grips with music.
After all, if we geared everything around what the Millennials
wanted, how could we cope with the younger generation (the Tenners as we might describe
them) who will see Facebook, Twitter, and today’s electronic devices as yesterday’s
technology. Who knows what tomorrow
holds, but let’s not abandon yesterday or the day before, just to satisfy a
small group who will, in less than a decade, be dismissed as old-fashioned and
irretrievably reactionary?
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