The More Things Change . . .

Monday marked the 22nd anniversary of The Taylor Group, which you may know (and if you're a frequent reader of this blog, you probably do know) started as a three-person company working out of Scott Taylor's basement in the spring of 1987.

I've been here for about half of that time, and I've seen some changes. Recently we've rekindled a relationship with a company for which we did a lot of work in the late '80s and '90s but lost touch with when some key contacts there moved on to other organizations. And so last week I found myself digging through six large storage boxes full of documents from our pre-internal-server days.

What kind of documents, you ask? Seventy-five-page, single-spaced reports. Pamphlets for "new shows for the upcoming television season" -- shows which were on the air for 10 years and have been off for the last five. And my favorite: transparencies of presentations!

And how un-green it all was!

It was a different time, for sure. But within these antiquated documents, not everything was unfamiliar. The handwriting, for example, is recognizable. Scott's is still the same as it always was; Peter's is still mostly illegible. And there are the familiar comments in the margins of report drafts, with suggestions for deeper analysis or observations for consideration. But what really struck me were some of the findings that hold true even today. For example, from a 1992 report:

"It is harder than ever to hold viewers' attention. People have less time, more choices, and shorter attention spans."

This was 1992! Before the age of cellphones, PDAs, and (for most people) the Internet. We always think we're getting busier and busier, yet we still find ways to manage our lives -- and, as researchers, we're always searching for innovative ways to help our clients "break through the clutter" as technology changes.

Lots can change in two decades, but I guess some things remain constant.