Being a public transportation faithful, I tend to notice popular trends while riding the CTA. Lately Kindles have been cropping up everywhere. For those of you who may not know, a Kindle is a portable reader where you can wirelessly download books and as well as read newspapers, magazines and blogs. Now I know this is just one of the many signs of our future, and although it is very eco-friendly, I just can’t hop on the Kindle bandwagon. Why? I love books. The cracking sound of a new book’s spine, the smell of the pages from an old favorite, the heftiness of a hardcover novel, and the ease of folding over a paperback are all part of an experience that the Kindle cannot replace. The same can be said about direct mail pieces.\n\n \n\nMore and more we are seeing the elimination of direct mailers in exchange for email marketing or e-blasts. Here at BDC, we are big fans of e-mail communications. That said however, it is still nice to diversify one’s communications and send a direct mail piece. A clever, simple and cleanly designed piece always gets noticed. Further, you could create a mailer that not only gets your message across, but is functional as well. Perhaps your mailer doubles as a bookmark, a checklist or even a poster that can later be hung up in someone’s office or home. That’s the benefit of tangible collateral… So I encourage you to consider mixing it up, getting offline and sending your audience a message that they can experience.