Forget digital, analog is back: Column
Big news. IKEA has come out with a catalog. And it's not unlike the catalogs they come out with every year. In fact, it is simply their 2015 catalog.
So why have over 12 million people watched a video about this completely mundane event? Because IKEA has positioned it as a device so simple and intuitive that it changes everything. "It's not a digital book or an e-book," announces IKEA. "It's a bookbook." It's completely wireless with an endless battery life. The navigation is natural and tactile. Hi-def photos. You get the idea.
It's a celebration of analog-ness in our digital, increasingly ephemeral wisp of a world. I'm not sure this is a cultural moment or a tipping point, but there are quiet developments underway that are drawing humans away from screens (at least some of the time) and into a world not unlike the world our grandparents lived in.
For example, last year on Kickstarter board games out-performed video games in the monetary arms race. People kicked in $52 million to help bring to market analog games made largely out of cardboard while digital games garnered $45 million.
Hopefully the next Scrabble or Monopoly will hit the shelves soon. I have played Scrabble by candlelight through a blizzard that knocked out power for 12 hours. And I have made words out of seven little wooden tiles through three days of rain on a camping trip in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. And so I celebrate this and other back-to-the-future trends. When practices once washed away by the tide of progress are considered cool again, I celebrate, my faith in humanity temporarily restored.
Consider vinyl records. They're back. In fact, sales of vinyl records are up 38% in 2014, according to Digital Music News. And sales in 2013 were up over 30% from the previous year. In fact, Jack White's new album sold 40,000 copies on vinyl in one week, the most for any vinyl record since 1991. If you're in the midst of middle age, and you want to impress a twenty-something, get a turntable, dig out your Led Zeppelin albums, and invite him or her over to listen to some music.
I work in advertising, and at every meeting I attend, I'm amazed at how many of the twenty-somethings carry blank books along with their iPads or laptops. They whip them out at meetings, making those of us who never completely gave up on paper feel relevant.
Backyard vegetable gardens – the analog version of buying produce at the supermarket – is back, too. In fact, 35% of all American households are growing vegetables, up 17% in the past five years. And the slow food movement has brought back foods our parents hoped they'd never see again: pot roasts and pork belly and all sorts of cheap cuts of meat that are now all the rage, thanks to the magic of low heat released over the course of hours.
And there's a better chance now than at any time in the last 100 years that you or someone you know have chickens in the backyard. (Our grandmothers who raised chickens out of necessity are sitting up in their graves at this curious development). My wife, Rique, and I have four hens and each one pays us for their free-range digs every day with an egg. It's a miracle that eases my feelings of incompetence over not being able to sync my iPhone to the Bluetooth in my car.
I don't know what's next. Probably not rotary phones. Maybe our kid's kids will be amazed by fountain pens and heavy-weight stationery. In the mean time, I'll be keeping score, recording each new/old trend as a victory, a respite from the powerful gravity of technology, pushing us toward the next new thing like our lives depended on it.
Jim Sollisch is a creative director and partner at Marcus Thomas, an ad agency in Cleveland.
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