Workplace social network platform, Yammer, posted this conversation-starting bulletin in the SoMA area of San Francisco. A TechCrunch article has a little more to the story:

Yeah, our officemate Yammer has decided to wedge a billboard-sized nail in the coffin of old media (i.e. “one-way communication”) which conspicuously includes print magazines, newspapers and eh hem, billboards. Says Yammer marketing designer Aria Shen, “Simply put, we wanted to make a statement about the new paradigm of how people and organizations communicate, and figured what better way to do that than to use the oldest mode of paid media.”

Yammer, a Twitter for enterprise, says it bought the 6K per month/3 month billboard run because it’s hiring and wants to attract engineers. Good call: The infamous area around our 410 Townsend office is like startup Mecca.

This campaign has been covered pretty extensively over the past couple of days. (Shame on us for not getting this posted sooner.) Seems the consensus among commenters, tweeters and sharers is that it actually proves itself wrong. While that’s quite obvious now, the message is completely invalid in the first place.

All Communication is One-Way Communication

How many tweets go ignored? How many Facebook statuses? Voicemails? Emails? Post-it notes? Everything is one-way until an audience responds. A response could be visiting a website mentioned in an interesting tweet, buying an item promoted in an email, calling a phone number from a direct mail piece or even just being more aware of a brand seen on a billboard. Social media hasn’t put a nail in the coffin of old media. It’s simply made it easier and cheaper to throw around thousands of one-way communications in the hopes that one of them sticks.

So Yammer can try to say old media is obsolete all they want. Myriad outdoor campaigns prove otherwise. I suspect most of their email marketing and social media tactics have gone relatively ignored until now. It took old media and a debate-inducing message to get the most attention they’ve probably seen in a long time. So congratulations to them on stirring the pot and getting some attention. This billboard is probably working like gangbusters.

On the topic of the death of old media, though, I’d just like to point out that only a picture of their billboard has gone viral. I have yet to see a print ad for this same campaign. Take that, newspapers.