Technology Versus Face to Face

My kids think I’m a Luddite. I am from the world where the value of face-to-face marketing was one I understood. Now I live in a world where people communicate with their thumbs. However lately I’ve seen that faces and thumbs can live in harmony.

I will admit that thumbs can connect to the world instantly. They can communicate to large numbers of people in real time, albeit at the cost of good grammar and spelling. Faces still have the advantage of being able to stare eyeball to eyeball with a client even if it is only one at a time. So in a world where it is faster and considerably less expensive to connect with a text, can one justify the cost of face-to-face?

A report I read recently prepared by the Harvard Business Review called, “Managing Across Distance in Today’s Economic Climate” focused on the issue of the high cost of business value versus the benefits.

The report described four key areas where face to face trumps technology:

So there are advantages to face to face. However, with the high cost of business travel in a shaky economy do these advantages justify the cost?

In this same report 60% of sales and marketing people said that cutbacks in their business travel would hurt business, while 36% of finance people said cutbacks would have no impact on the business. So now we have the age old conflict between those who solicit business and those who pay for it.

The solution is to make a strong enough case for face to face and to provide new metrics for measuring return. Here are three things to consider:

The battle of thumbs and faces has only just begun. Perhaps in the future one will totally replace the other – but that’s not the case now. Before you let the finance people decimate your face to face budget perhaps its time to sit down with them and have a serious conversation.

Reference: http://hkg.grants.ba.com/harvard-business-review.pdf

© 2010 by Barry Siskind. Barry Siskind is author of Powerful Exhibit marketing. He is also President of International Training and Management Company who offers a number of services to exhibitors including the creation and implementation of a mystery-shopping program. Contact Barry at barry@siskindtraining.com for more information.