A great post from Seth Godin

An awesome post from Seth regarding trade guilds.

I have felt similarly regarding the League of Chicago Theaters for many years. The League's most popular program for its members is discounted ad rates. Without fail these have been print ads in Chicago's dying papers. Last year, they finally got radio ad discounts beyond NPR... though I don't think that the radio industry is doing that much better. What about the many blogs that people now use for their news and events? How about Facebook? Or, the CTA (most people still notice ads on buses and trains as long as they are riding them)?

In January the League blogged about Web 2.0. Deb posed a lot of questions and eventually ended with, "Did it sell any tickets?" Can you ever attribute one single part of your marketing campaign as being the pivotal driver for a single ticket purchase? Or do theaters often measure the last impression prior to a ticket purchase, instead of the achievement of the marketing campaign as a whole?

Last week Thomas Cott alerted me to this article from Adage. The largest age group on Facebook is 35-45, even I was shocked! Not only that, the fastest growing age group is 55+. Denying the importance of Facebook and other social networking sites in any sort of community, audience-based industry is going to put you out of touch with your audience. In Kris Vire's words - You Will Die.