OMENS, PORTENTS AND AUGURS - The Pocket Internet

"OMENS, PORTENTS AND AUGURS"

(A speech delivered at a bank marketing convention)

I've been asked to speak about media...about the future...and about 30 minutes.

"...the future will come faster
than we expect, and the
changes it brings will be
broader than we can anticipate."

The last is easy. The first two are not. Crystal balls are notoriously flawed. And, too often, what we say will happen in the future is merely what we wish will happen. But I can tell you this with certainty: the future will come faster than we expect, and the changes it brings will be broader than we can anticipate.

Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian thinker about communications, has said that people can't know the present, can't really be aware of the environment in which we are currently living. The moment we become aware of our environment, he says, it no longer is our environment. It has at the moment become the past. Now if, try as we will, we can't know 1966, how can we ever be expected to know 1980? Yet we must, you and I. If we are to spend our money wisely to reach the people we want to reach. If we hope to stay a step ahead of our racing competition.

All right.

"The future
looks good
for checking
accounts."

Let's start our look at media 10 to 15 years from now by looking at the kind of country we'll be living in in 1980.

It'll be a U.S.A. with 300 million people. About 65 million families. And a trillion-dollar-a-year economy. You bankers may easily grasp what a trillion dollars a year is, but it helps me to break it down to somewhat more manageable figures...like 155 million dollars an hour...or about 2 1/2 million dollars every minute. The future looks good for checking accounts.

One-third of those 300 million Americans -- 100 million of them -- will be high school graduates. And in the age group between 20 and 34 -- the group that's just beginning to make some money and that wants to know how to handle it.

And now, gentlemen, how will you be reaching those people in 1980?

As I intimated, I have no crystal ball. But BBDO does. In our offices we have 130 bright media men. We also have a separate department called the Information Retrieval Center. It utilizes the memory of a computer, plus microfilm, plus xerography to answer almost any question in seconds. That is, if you push the right button. If your finger slips, you might get a hot corned beef on rye. So here, light on the mustard, is what BBDO thinks will be happening to advertising media in the next 10 to 15 years.

First, what about newspapers.

"There will be more
new dailies in the suburbs,
as newspapers go where
the people are going. These
will be strong papers."

In 1980, there will be fewer of them. And there will be more of them.

There will be fewer newspapers in big cities. There will be more and more such mergers as we've had in New York. In 1962, there were seven newspapers in Fun City on the Hudson, including the Mirror, the World-Telegram & Sun, the Journal-American and the Herald Tribune. The Mirror is gone and the other three are all one paper now called the World Journal Tribune, and New York has only four newspapers.

There will be more new dailies in the suburbs, as newspapers go where the people are going. These will be strong papers.

Newspapers will install new presses and equipment, so you can expect a gradual move to more quality color printing. Big newspapers will print regional or neighborhood editions -- in order to catch their readers where they live and spend. (Go to page 2 of 3)

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