Digital meets traditional : The future of communication

Some people think we are going to completely abandon traditional communication practices because of new/online media. 

But maybe the future is more about merging traditional practices and digital media or finding bridges between both of them. 

Some marketing specialists have already started measuring online impact related with tangible conversions (not only sales but store's affluence or printed catalogues, etc.) and activists have also achieved to translate activism in physical gestures (for example in the amnesty international signatures campaign : Sharpen your pencil). 

Here are three examples of this new "digital feat traditional" trend.

The first example is a traditional street ad campaign in Paris from a department store in the city center, which launched this week.

Their campaign aims at catching "creative urbans" attention, presenting their store as an inspirational meeting point. The store (BHV) choose to publicize their new philosophy in the form of street ads displaying tweets, in which real twitter users (with a creative background) are giving their advice about this store.

A real printed tweet in the main street with a big photo of the tweeter user, great idea!

To make it more viral and practical for the viewers, I would have added a QR code redirecting automatically to a pre-written tweet to RT the ad. 

An other example of this gangways between "real live" and virtual is a great app I have found lately, which offers you to chose your digital photos (on your mobile) and after an easy online payment process, they get printed and you receive them home or get them sent wherever you want.

I have tried the service and for me it's a perfect way to share plenty of photos with my grandmother who is thousand miles away and who isn't using the Internet ( ... yet). 

This kind of printing system could have great applications opportunities in the media industry. 

Finally: the use of hashtag and written testimonials in real life. Some of the latest latest mobilization campaigns are promoting the social media sharing of photos showing hand-written letters or hand-written keywords to canalize powerful testimonials (the #obamacare campaign for example). 

All the possibilities of merging digital and analogue and viceversa are not yet completely explored and maybe this tendency could be the common denominator of the next communication and services.