Advertising: A Campaign to Help People Learn Internet Skills

THE Advertising Council and Connect2Compete, a nonprofit group whose goal is to eliminate the digital divide in the United States, are introducing a public service campaign to help those who are not digitally literate find free training to obtain these skills.

In remarks prepared for a speech in Washington last month about Connect2Compete’s efforts, the Federal Communications Commission chairman, Julius Genachowski, said approximately one in three Americans, or 100 million people, still do not have broadband in their homes, with low-income Americans and minorities “disproportionately on the wrong side of the digital divide.”

This matters, he continued, because “over 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies post job openings exclusively online. Over half of today’s jobs require technology skills, and nearly 80 percent of jobs in the next decade are projected to require digital skills.”

According to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, one in five American adults — about 62 million people — do not use the Internet. The 2012 Pew Internet and American Life Project said the main reason these people “don’t go online is because they don’t think the Internet is relevant to them.”

To reach adults who share this sentiment, Connect2Compete approached the Advertising Council last year for help creating a public service campaign “with messages that get at the relevance of the Internet, how you can do something, or do something better that you may already do, by being online,” said Zach Leverenz, chief executive of Connect2Compete.

To that end, the Ad Council and the New York office of Young & Rubicam, part of the WPP Group, created a multimedia advertising campaign that begins on Thursday, a date chosen because its numbers (3-21) stand for a three-two-one countdown to get “everyone on” the Internet. The campaign’s Web site is EveryoneOn.org.

Advertising being distributed by the Ad Council includes a TV spot featuring Reginald, an actual truck driver from California whose instructor shows him how to use a computer, get on the Internet, and buy a plane ticket as a surprise for his wife. “She’s going to love me all over again now,” he says. The spot concludes, “But first, he’s going to surprise himself. Get online. Find a free class near you.”

Radio ads feature actors portraying individuals who do not know how to use the Internet. One is a man named Peter, whose instructor shows him how to look for electrician jobs online. The voice-over says, “This is Peter. Recently he got help going on the Internet for the first time to look for a new job. In the past, Peter’s gotten work through people he knew. But he heard there were more jobs online.”

One outdoor ad features a row of people — resembling paper doll cutouts — holding hands; the text says “1 in 5 Americans don’t use the Internet. Luckily help is all around.” These ads include the campaign’s toll-free telephone number.

Once the audience for all advertising — which is running in both English and Spanish — calls the toll-free number, they are asked for their ZIP code and given the location of free training classes nearby. Class information is also available via texting. In addition, the campaign’s Web site locates classes — which are being offered by over 21,000 libraries and other centers — by ZIP code.

The advertising being introduced on Thursday was preceded this month by related digital advertising and Facebook and Twitter outreach, directed at those who are already digitally literate and encouraging them to help those who are not.

Cheryl Chapman, a creative director at Young & Rubicam in New York, said the agency “knew we couldn’t scare people into using the Internet, so we wanted the advertising to feel disarming, to capture the real emotion of learning something new.”

According to Dzu Bui, campaign director of the Advertising Council, the campaign is directed primarily at adults who are not digitally literate, “since they are the ones who have control over accessing the Internet, they are the decision makers, they make choices for their families.”

Peggy Conlon, president and chief executive of the Ad Council, said the goal of the campaign — the group’s first to address digital literacy issues — was to “overcome the barriers people have to going online.”

She also predicted media outlets — which donate time and space to run all Ad Council advertising — might be motivated to carry this campaign, because it could “help increase their audiences. An informed citizenry is a stronger citizenry. There are many reasons this is good for everybody.”

Experts differed about the campaign and its strategy.

Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor who teaches the economics of information at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, called the campaign’s goals “on target,” since, he said, the median wage of Americans today is lower than it was 15 years ago, in part because they have “not kept up with digital technologies.”

Ruth Small, director of the Center for Digital Literacy at Syracuse University, commended the campaign for addressing specific subjects that interest people, like job hunting.

Although Dan Wagner, Unesco chair in learning and literacy at the graduate school of education of the University of Pennsylvania, said “anything that helps people, especially the poor, get access to technology is good,” he called creating relevant content for those who are not digitally literate just as important as showing them how to get online.

James McQuivey, who follows consumer technology adoption for Forrester Research, questioned the campaign’s prospects. “I don’t think it will have the impact they want it to have because most people who are not connected to the Internet are not there by choice. It’s not that these people are sitting and waiting for the Internet and can’t get it.”

Technology Is Changing How Students Learn, Teachers Say

The researchers note that their findings represent the subjective views of teachers and should not be seen as definitive proof that widespread use of computers, phones and video games affects students’ capability to focus.

Even so, the researchers who performed the studies, as well as scholars who study technology’s impact on behavior and the brain, say the studies are significant because of the vantage points of teachers, who spend hours a day observing students.

The timing of the studies, from two well-regarded research organizations, appears to be coincidental.

One was conducted by the Pew Internet Project, a division of the Pew Research Center that focuses on technology-related research. The other comes from Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization in San Francisco that advises parents on media use by children. It was conducted by Vicky Rideout, a researcher who has previously shown that media use among children and teenagers ages 8 to 18 has grown so fast that they on average spend twice as much time with screens each year as they spend in school.

Teachers who were not involved in the surveys echoed their findings in interviews, saying they felt they had to work harder to capture and hold students’ attention.

“I’m an entertainer. I have to do a song and dance to capture their attention,” said Hope Molina-Porter, 37, an English teacher at Troy High School in Fullerton, Calif., who has taught for 14 years. She teaches accelerated students, but has noted a marked decline in the depth and analysis of their written work.

She said she did not want to shrink from the challenge of engaging them, nor did other teachers interviewed, but she also worried that technology was causing a deeper shift in how students learned. She also wondered if teachers were adding to the problem by adjusting their lessons to accommodate shorter attention spans.

“Are we contributing to this?” Ms. Molina-Porter said. “What’s going to happen when they don’t have constant entertainment?”

Scholars who study the role of media in society say no long-term studies have been done that adequately show how and if student attention span has changed because of the use of digital technology. But there is mounting indirect evidence that constant use of technology can affect behavior, particularly in developing brains, because of heavy stimulation and rapid shifts in attention.

Kristen Purcell, the associate director for research at Pew, acknowledged that the findings could be viewed from another perspective: that the education system must adjust to better accommodate the way students learn, a point that some teachers brought up in focus groups themselves.

“What we’re labeling as ‘distraction,’ some see as a failure of adults to see how these kids process information,” Ms. Purcell said. “They’re not saying distraction is good but that the label of ‘distraction’ is a judgment of this generation.”

The surveys also found that many teachers said technology could be a useful educational tool. In the Pew survey, which was done in conjunction with the College Board and the National Writing Project, roughly 75 percent of 2,462 teachers surveyed said that the Internet and search engines had a “mostly positive” impact on student research skills. And they said such tools had made students more self-sufficient researchers.

But nearly 90 percent said that digital technologies were creating “an easily distracted generation with short attention spans.”

Similarly, of the 685 teachers surveyed in the Common Sense project, 71 percent said they thought technology was hurting attention span “somewhat” or “a lot.” About 60 percent said it hindered students’ ability to write and communicate face to face, and almost half said it hurt critical thinking and their ability to do homework.

There was little difference in how younger and older teachers perceived the impact of technology.

Venture Capital Firms, Once Discreet, Learn the Promotional Game

Sequoia Capital, the prominent firm behind such tech behemoths as Apple and Google, and several other top venture firms stopped accepting investments from public institutions like the University of California system just to avoid having their financials disclosed to the press.

Self-promotion was shunned by venture capitalists as crass. Eyes rolled when Timothy C. Draper, a founder at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, graced a 2006 cover of the Thomson-Reuters Venture Capital Journal in a Captain America costume.

Investment partners at Sequoia even used a disparaging name for venture capitalists who promoted themselves to the press: “parade jumpers.”

Now, Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley is one long parade route. Venture capitalists are hiring full-time public relations experts to tell bloggers and reporters of their investing prowess. They publicize their every doing and thought on Twitter and in blog posts.

In the last year, several top firms have hired people to handle marketing, branding and public relations full time. Among them: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Lightspeed Venture Partners and True Ventures. Many others, like Benchmark Capital, New Enterprise Associates and Greylock Partners, keep public relations firms on retainer.

A number of V.C. firms ranging from some of the oldest, like Bessemer Venture Partners, to some of the youngest, like Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, are now seeking full-time marketing experts.

Even Sequoia, which sniffed at the notion when the trend began, has hired P.R. staff.

The self-promotion, branding and race to build an admiring Twitter following, people here say, is a symptom of the stresses on the consolidating venture capital industry. Fewer venture firms are trying to raise money from pension funds, universities and others institutions.

There are now 526 venture capital firms actively investing in the United States, down from 1,022 firms in 2000, according to the National Venture Capital Association. In the last 10 years, venture firms returned, on average, an abysmal 4.6 percent to investors. Institutional investors are looking to scale back on the asset class and reallocate funds just to top firms, where the competition to raise money and invest in hot technology start-ups is fierce.

Ten years ago, entrepreneurs needed some kind of insider advantage to get a meeting with a firm. Now the most promising entrepreneurs do careful due diligence — on Twitter, in blogs and in the media — before agreeing to take coffee with a V.C. The best entrepreneurs are courted by the venture capitalists, not the other way around.

But the biggest catalyst for the attention-seeking atmosphere, venture capitalists say, has been the rise of Andreessen Horowitz. The speed with which the venture firm — started by Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape, and Ben Horowitz, a former executive there — has rocketed to the top ranks has served as a case study in successful self-promotion.

The two men started their firm in 2009, when Silicon Valley was still reeling from the financial crisis. It was the era in which seasoned investors at Sequoia Capital had just delivered a PowerPoint presentation to entrepreneurs at their portfolio companies titled: “R.I.P. Good Times.”

Mr. Andreessen and Mr. Horowitz based their firm’s strategy on a simple investment thesis: each year 15 deals account for 97 percent of all venture capital profits. To be successful, they would have to pursue those 15 companies. And they would do it by aggressively marketing their expertise to the reporters and bloggers who follow start-ups. And they would appeal directly to entrepreneurs in blogs and on Twitter.

It worked right from the outset. In July 2009, Fortune announced the firm in a cover article. The debut was widely covered in popular technology blogs like TechCrunch, VentureBeat and All Things Digital.

Then in 2010, the firm hired Margit Wennmachers, a founder of the Outcast Communications P.R. firm who had built it into the top adviser of tech start-ups. She was far from being just a hired gun. Ms. Wennmachers was instrumental in the firm’s initial coverage and she was made a full partner, sitting at the table at the earliest stages of investment decisions.

“To be a top five firm, you have to brand yourself,” Ms. Wennmachers said in an interview. “We didn’t want entrepreneurs to say, ‘Who are these people?’ We didn’t want to start a fund by ‘the tall guy who invented a browser,’ so we pushed for press and set up a direct communication channel with blogs.”

Venture Capital Firms, Once Discreet, Learn the Promotional Game

Sequoia Capital, the prominent firm behind such tech behemoths as Apple and Google, and several other top venture firms stopped accepting investments from public institutions like the University of California system just to avoid having their financials disclosed to the press.

Self-promotion was shunned by venture capitalists as crass. Eyes rolled when Timothy C. Draper, a founder at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, graced a 2006 cover of the Thomson-Reuters Venture Capital Journal in a Captain America costume.

Investment partners at Sequoia even used a disparaging name for venture capitalists who promoted themselves to the press: “parade jumpers.”

Now, Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley is one long parade route. Venture capitalists are hiring full-time public relations experts to tell bloggers and reporters of their investing prowess. They publicize their every doing and thought on Twitter and in blog posts.

In the last year, several top firms have hired people to handle marketing, branding and public relations full time. Among them: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Lightspeed Venture Partners and True Ventures. Many others, like Benchmark Capital, New Enterprise Associates and Greylock Partners, keep public relations firms on retainer.

A number of V.C. firms ranging from some of the oldest, like Bessemer Venture Partners, to some of the youngest, like Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, are now seeking full-time marketing experts.

Even Sequoia, which sniffed at the notion when the trend began, has hired P.R. staff.

The self-promotion, branding and race to build an admiring Twitter following, people here say, is a symptom of the stresses on the consolidating venture capital industry. Fewer venture firms are trying to raise money from pension funds, universities and others institutions.

There are now 526 venture capital firms actively investing in the United States, down from 1,022 firms in 2000, according to the National Venture Capital Association. In the last 10 years, venture firms returned, on average, an abysmal 4.6 percent to investors. Institutional investors are looking to scale back on the asset class and reallocate funds just to top firms, where the competition to raise money and invest in hot technology start-ups is fierce.

Ten years ago, entrepreneurs needed some kind of insider advantage to get a meeting with a firm. Now the most promising entrepreneurs do careful due diligence — on Twitter, in blogs and in the media — before agreeing to take coffee with a V.C. The best entrepreneurs are courted by the venture capitalists, not the other way around.

But the biggest catalyst for the attention-seeking atmosphere, venture capitalists say, has been the rise of Andreessen Horowitz. The speed with which the venture firm — started by Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape, and Ben Horowitz, a former executive there — has rocketed to the top ranks has served as a case study in successful self-promotion.

The two men started their firm in 2009, when Silicon Valley was still reeling from the financial crisis. It was the era in which seasoned investors at Sequoia Capital had just delivered a PowerPoint presentation to entrepreneurs at their portfolio companies titled: “R.I.P. Good Times.”

Mr. Andreessen and Mr. Horowitz based their firm’s strategy on a simple investment thesis: each year 15 deals account for 97 percent of all venture capital profits. To be successful, they would have to pursue those 15 companies. And they would do it by aggressively marketing their expertise to the reporters and bloggers who follow start-ups. And they would appeal directly to entrepreneurs in blogs and on Twitter.

It worked right from the outset. In July 2009, Fortune announced the firm in a cover article. The debut was widely covered in popular technology blogs like TechCrunch, VentureBeat and All Things Digital.

Then in 2010, the firm hired Margit Wennmachers, a founder of the Outcast Communications P.R. firm who had built it into the top adviser of tech start-ups. She was far from being just a hired gun. Ms. Wennmachers was instrumental in the firm’s initial coverage and she was made a full partner, sitting at the table at the earliest stages of investment decisions.

“To be a top five firm, you have to brand yourself,” Ms. Wennmachers said in an interview. “We didn’t want entrepreneurs to say, ‘Who are these people?’ We didn’t want to start a fund by ‘the tall guy who invented a browser,’ so we pushed for press and set up a direct communication channel with blogs.”