Intel Outside

After midwifing the People's Republic in 1949, Chairman Mao set out to erase every trace of China's past.

So it's no wonder Chinese Millennials find their nation's history "remote, irrelevant, and uninteresting," as marketers at Intel recently discovered.

There's not much of it around.

To help right Mao's wrong, Intel tapped J. Walter Thompson to produce films depicting epic moments from China's past and project them on the city wall of Sian at an outdoor event.

Intel didn't stop there.

It used proprietary 3D facial-scanning technology to capture and insert the faces of Millennial event-goers into the films in real time. The Millennials became the starring leads of the film.

"History became personal; history came alive," says Intel's Louise Felton.

Digital and Events: They're Cousins

Yes, we get it: digital's hip and events are square.

But they're cousins, identical cousins all the way. One pair of matching bookends, different as night and day.

B2B CMOs know they spend 50 cents of every marketing dollar on events.

But they don't recognize, in reality, they spend even more.

John Hall, CEO of Influence & Company, recently told me an ever-growing portion his clients' digital spend directly supports customer engagement through events (before, during and after).

B2B CMOs are using online channels to drive face-to-face results; they simply don't assign that spend to the events.

That means CMOs are oblivious to the true picture. Spending surveys don't capture it either.

In this family, the brash, hip child is gets all the parents' attention, while the shy and dutiful one goes quietly about her business. What a wild duet!

Unmistakable

If you can't explain something in a few words, try fewer.

― Robert Brault

When Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage appeared in 1895, reviewers sang the writer's praises.

"They all insist that I am a veteran of the Civil War," he told fellow journalist John Hilliard, "whereas the fact is, as you know, I never smelled even the powder of a sham battle."

The story succeeded, Crane said, not because he wrote from observation, but because, "I endeavored to express myself in the simplest and most concise way."

He told Hilliard his goal, following Emerson's advice, was to leave unsaid the "long logic beneath the story."

"My chiefest desire was to write plainly and unmistakably, so that all men (and some women) might read and understand. That, to my mind, is good writing."

Death Wins Nothing Here

“Death wins nothing here,
gnawing wings that amputate―
then spread, lift up, fly.” 

                                                                                         ― Aberjhani

Income Crisis Worries Associations

A UXB lies buried in Naylor's newly released annual study, 2016 Association Adviser Communications Benchmarking Report.

The study finds 54% of association execs think their inability to generate non-dues revenue from communications activities is a serious or significant problem, up from 11% only a year ago.

Most trade and professional associations rely on non-dues revenue to operate. 

According to ASAE, 59% of trade associations' revenue is non-dues revenue; and 66% of professional associations' revenue is non-dues revenue.

If Naylor's study is correct, associations may be facing, if not an existential crisis, a financial one.

POSTSCRIPT: It's time for associations to quit sitting on their assets (pun intended):

• Marketing and membership lists can be profitably rented
• Event content can be profitably livestreamed
• Webinars can be profitably packaged from publications
• Event sponsorships can be profitably sold to "nonendemic" sponsors