British Air

I'm sitting on the train this morning reading the WSJ and I see once again an ad touting in person meetings and how you can't end a meeting with a handshake over email. It's an ad for British Airways. As anyone who has ever read anything I've ever written - this is what I'm all about. But for some reason today, it almost struck me as odd that we NEED a pr campaign for human contact. Could we be a few years away from marketing anything and everything that happens in person? Championing the need to shop IN a store rather than just online - to feel the fabric, smell the lotions, test drive couches. Will retail go away? Will peapod deliver everything and anything? Will the "generation next" have no idea what its like to have an actual playdate or an in person dinner party? Will we manage our lives from our homes? Or, as Jim Dator from The Market Research event mentioned - will we all need to move to space because we're running out of resources here? At FUSE this year Michael Tchong predicted the possibility of living immediate impact lives where we will take a pill to go to sleep, another one to wake up, another one to concentrate. With declining populations in parts of the world, I wonder if one day we'll be living in an "episode of Twilight Zone" WATCHING an episode of Twilight Zone that depicts people interacting in person like some unfathomable action. As a marketer, I can see new bumper sticker already... keep the LIVE in believe. Ok, minus the e.