Principled Innovation LLC

It’s not 1986…

April 13th, 2006

Does your association still produce print directories? Well, it’s time to stop. Not a year from now, three years from now or five years from now. Stop today. Stop right now.

This is the essential advice of blogger Max Kalehoff. Max, a member of the Marketing Research Association in Glastonbury, Connecticut, makes clear that he regards “the 10-pound, dead-tree format” for directories as toast. He is dumping his $99.95 “monster” directory ($169.95 for non-members) in the recycle bin, not even taking the time to bring it to his new office space. Max suggests that MRA take the savings from not printing the directory to create a better online directory site with improved search capabilities. As he writes, “It’s 2006, not 1986.”

I completely agree with Max. The traditional print directories published by so many associations are simply screaming out to be innovated. Print directories are static and cumbersome, environmentally unconscious, obsolete even before publication, and do little if anything to support the building of stronger relationships between and among members and business partners. So why do we still print them?

Well, there’s the rub. It’s the one point on this subject that Max’s post doesn’t address accurately. For most associations, print directories are significant source of advertising revenue, so the “savings” he describes would more likely be losses of existing revenue streams. This is why we must explore how to innovate the print directory rather than simply sunset it.

One possible solution is to create the directory as a stand-alone application that can be uploaded to a mobile phone or other handheld device, with regular updates and upgrades available for downloading via the Web. The application, its updates and the main online directory Web site can all include Google-style text ads based on keywords that link to very specific and relevant offers to that organization’s members. The value of this kind of directory would increase exponentially over the print version for both members and advertisers.

But this is simply one idea. I’d like to hear others, so please share. And by the way, this post is the first of many in the new “Extreme Makeover: Association Edition” category to which I’ll be posting on this blog. If you have an “extreme makeover” topic you’d like me to tackle, just send me an e-mail!

If you're new here, I hope you will consider subscribing to the P.I. Blog. Just click on this link to add it to your RSS reader. You can also receive e-mail updates by subscribing via the box located on the blog itself. Thanks for visiting!

Entry Filed under: Principled Innovation Blog, Announcements, Social Media, Innovation, Associations, Extreme Makeover