There are two camps that seem to be fighting each other these days. One is the old school camp of marketing and promotion and one is the new school. Paper and phones vs. digital and blogs. The conflict comes from the pure traditionalists that are closed to and a little fearful of the new and the cutting edge youngsters hooked up to their laptops and other devises who haven’t been around long enough to have ever seen the effectiveness of the old.

A friend of mine, who runs a pretty successful product design consultancy, is purely old school. I’d link to her site here, but she doesn’t have one. She isn’t on LinkedIn, has no idea what Twitter or Facebook is, only uses email to send files, yet she is a sought after designer. She uses pencil and paper and a telephone to do business. How does she get clients? The old fashioned way. By sending a beautifully designed direct mail piece and following up with a phone call. Remember mail, with stamps and envelopes? It works for her and she has no shortage of clients.

There are those that would be screaming that, in order to be competitive, you have got to get out there in the social media world. You have to have a blog, you have to be on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, comment on other blogs, rub elbows with the who’s who in the digital world. In a lot of cases this is absolutely true. I’ve said that myself, but I’m seeing a trend of everyone telling everyone else how to run their businesses, old and new alike.

My argument in support of old is that there is so much information and non-stop talk going on out there in the digital world that people find themselves yelling or talking more and more thinking that will get more attention. It starts to get so noisy out there that it’s really hard to stand out as an individual. Because of this, the old school approach starts to seem new again. Getting a beautiful or interesting promotional piece in the mail is a special thing again, and ironically is something that can have the power to make a business stand out from the crowd of the electronic images and messages that bombarded us on a daily basis. It’s like hanging onto that halter top for so long, that it came back in style, and actually looks pretty good with those new pants.

My argument for new school is that it is so quick and so vast, that it opens up a whole new opportunity for people to access your business and for your business to access people. It’s engaging, dynamic, and if used creatively, has the potential to grow your business beyond your wildest dreams. I just think there needs to be a balance. Every business, every person has their own philosophy and methods of reaching their market. Assumptions can’t be made that old is dead and new is it (or vice versa). I’ve been around long enough to have witnessed the success from using both methods. I was college educated during old school times and self educated on the job during new school times. It’s not an either/or scenario. I think both schools still have some learning to do.