If you are interested in some of the broader Marketing issues that have come up in this romp through Display Advertising in Social Media, the Wharton School recently published a couple of pieces.

This first one talks about the Engagement Value of snail mail versus e-mail.  Some of the interesting quotes:

“In marketing [terms], email is transactional; paper is relational.”

“It seems like a person sending a written note vs. a person sending email is investing more of himself or herself in that communication. It takes more effort to write a letter, and people often equate effort with how much a person cares.” 

In other words, an electronic relationship requires very little investment on either side, so the level of Emotional Impact it creates versus print is lower.  I have seen this in action, for example, using post cards to re-activate (sorry, re-Engage) lapsed online customers. 

Here’s a link to the article: ‘Dead Tree’ Medium No Longer: For Many Marketers, Print Outperforms Digital

Related to my examples of Social Media that Works, and especially the Moms Tampa Bay project, we have an article on mixing and balancing professional with amateur content and the Trust issues there. 

Couple of quotes:

“Some things that look amateur are professional and vice versa. You never really know what’s going on. And it’s hard to track these things down without cross checking. The digital environment is putting an enormous responsibility on the consumer.”

“It’s amusing that two of the examples the Newsweek article cites as examples of the ‘revenge of the experts’ — Mahalo and About.com — are what I would call amateur sites. They don’t use professional journalists or researchers; they use knowledgeable enthusiasts to serve as human filters. The fact that those human filters get paid doesn’t change anything. What makes someone an amateur isn’t the absence of money; it’s the absence of traditional credentials.”

Here’s a link to the article: Experts versus Amateurs: A Tug of War over the Future of Media

Have a good weekend!

PM Update:

See also User Generated Magazines and The Future of Advertising for additional thoughts in these areas.

P.S.  Speaking of offline verus online Relationships, Engagement, and Trust, if you’re going to the Toronto eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, I’ll be teaching the WAA BaseCamp session Monday and speaking on Tuesday – see ya there.