Have you noticed to how many ads you are exposed everyday? From TV spots in lengthy commercial breaks, to skippable ads and pop up banners, advertisers go fiercely after our valuable attention. They aim for message reach, they want to maximize click through rates and conquer top of mind awareness for their brands. In this struggle, marketers set KPIs, follow metrics and peruse market research studies in an endless (and probably vain) race.

But wait a minute… Let me slightly rephrase the sentence above: “Advertisers go after our valuable attention, mainly while we are in front of a screen.” What happens when we are off-screen?

 – “You can’t measure that!” says the online communications angel sitting on the right shoulder.

– “It is when you are off-screen where amazing happens!” says the offline communications angel sitting on the left shoulder.

I guess professional photographer Joanna Skiftou, listened to the last angel and decided to snail mail me (yes you heard that right!) two printouts with a small sample of her portfolio to my office address. Since we haven’t physically met before, but we were only connected on LinkedIn, I quickly figured out that she preferred to quickly google search my office address and post me a small but distinctive sample of her work instead of sending me a digital message with her full online portfolio. She decided to proceed with a traditional mail so that the prospect pauses and considers her extraordinary sample of work. Why did I like it? Because the communication was super targeted (to a marketing professional, during working hours time slot) and because she used an alternative uncluttered channel. In this way, she achieved literally to come in touch with her work, breaking the overwhelming digital clutter.

Going offline when everyone else is online can work truly well.

What are you planning to do differently, in the environment we operate today?