Everywhere you look, you can see people peering into their bitsy screen and fumbling over Thumbelina-size keys trying to stay connected to work, friends, children, partners… life. We’ve all seen them — stumbling down the sidewalk, steering with their knees or even holding on to a baby carriage while they type away, oblivious to the real world passing them by. Whether e-mailing, texting or SMSing their life away, they have chosen to unplug from the real world while they hook-up with their NBF who LOLs at every benign transmission from you or their 500 other BFFs.

This has gotten so ridiculous I’ve come up with a name for them:

Zomberries [zom-ber-eez] – noun, plural: Zomberries are individuals who think that their reciprocal response is so important that they are willing to forfeit their terrestrial existence, and in some cases their safety, to fondle their QWERTY at every opportunity.

When I recently attended the AIM Conference, Zomberries where everywhere. The conference was on social marketing and especially mobile marketing. Like many, I make sure I keep a healthy dose of skepticism since we are in the business of finding and adapting media that will help our clients with their businesses and brand today and tomorrow. Though I was encouraged by the conference on a number of levels, which we have touched on in previous blogs, the BIG picture remains the same as ever. There is a balance that must be maintained or the market will shift. In the case of mobile, the danger is that if the activity starts to over consume your existence, the quality of your real life diminishes. New media and the virtual world should augment our reality for the better. So the next time you’re weaving down a busy sidewalk with your head buried in your Blackberry, make sure you look up once in a while or you’ll smash into another Zomberry.

*Sent from my trampberry.

I've been in the marketing game for almost 25 years now and the most valuable thing I've learned is that I have a whole lot more to learn. I started off in sales and worked my way up (so I thought) to advertising. In hind sight, I realize that sales was the top! You can have sales without advertising, but advertising without sales is just useless art. When Trampoline Branding was formed, we set out with that firmly planted in our minds. Now more than ever we need to keep it very simple for consumers. Good thing, I'm a very simple guy!