We don't talk any more

we see this “voice avoidance” as a trend that will only continue to rise. The Last week saw the launch of the Ofcom communications market report. This annual piece of bespoke research always brings new insights into changing consumer behaviour, and this year is no exception.

The first gem that caught my eye really resonated with behaviours we are seeing across our client base.

Ofcom asked a representative sample of the UK population “How do you prefer to communicate with friends and family?”

Back came the politically correct answer: 67% of us claim we prefer to meet face to face. Phone calls and text messages are said to be poor relations at 10% and 5% respectively.

They then asked an actual behavioural question: “what do you actually use on a daily basis to communicate with friends and family?” Face to face falls to second place, at just 49%, and the winner is, wait for it … text messaging, 9 points clear at 58%!

If we split this latter question by age the difference is even more severe - with 90%of 16-24 year olds using text to communicate with friends and family on a daily basis.

This really chimes with both what we see in the pub and in our daily results from ART™.

In the pub we see social groups interacting less physically and more virtually. They may be present together but they are “talking” (texting) with a virtual group of friends. And in our response results for clients we see the inexorable rise of text as a response channel. For many clients more than a third of all response is now initiated by an inbound text.

Given the ubiquity of the mobile phone, and the invasion of face to face marketing good news is that it brings opportunities as well as threats. But more anon.

Mike Colling
Managing Director