Digilogue by Anders Sorman-Nilsson

Wiley, $31.99 (MH)

THIS BOOK EXONERATES itself from being just another ‘how-to- do-it’ tome by having a bet each way. Its subtitle explains that it’s about ‘how to win the digital minds and analogue hearts of tomorrow’s customers.’ In other words it’s not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I recently made a presentation on the media landscape to an organisation with a large advertising budget – they were pleased that I had grey hair and wasn’t someone with a cap on backwards and his jeans around his arse, telling them they had to be on Twitter and Facebook. The real answer to which horse you should back in the in the Digital/ Analogue race is: “Depends on who you’re talking to.”

It isn’t exactly news that mass communication is waning in importance, now that we’re able to have personal engagement with customers. Carpet-bombing is so WWII; now we use drones to pick out individual targets. This tells us how we can leverage the technology to enable more meaningful one-to-one communication.

With some pretty useful graphs, diagrams and side-bars, the author gives us strategic processes and protocols to make sure that all the digital boxes are ticked in reaching the hearts of customers in the analogue world. And that’s where everything has changed and nothing has. The digital world supplies the plumbing to reach the customer, but Sorman-Nilsson reinforces that what goes down the pipes still has to touch hearts.