… Except for viewers in Scotland. That old phrase used to strike terror into people watching the TV in seventies and eighties (normally on BBC 1) as you would get a description of a great live football game, film or TV show and they you would hear “except for viewers in Scotland” and you’d get Gaelic or something.

And watching the recent video put online (and below) by Simply Zesty, an Ireland-based online PR and social media firm I’m wondering if all this does is show the digital divide up more than anything. More after the video.

Lovely video with some interesting factoids but two things bother me:

1. Where did the numbers come from? If it’s a survey, how many people/businesses were sampled?
2. Those figures are heavily skewed towards England. London alone skews the percentages.

There are whole parts of Scotland where you can – theoretically – access the web but even something as 2.0 basic as watching a YouTube video without stutters or pauses is impossible. There are incredibly large parts of the country where something as basic as a 3G or phone signal is equally impossible.

Now in 2009 I organised the Scottish leg of the Digital Britain Unconferences and it was mooted there that in many parts of large cities even like Glasgow, broadband sign-up is only at around 33% (National Statistics show that Scotland in 2009 had the lowest penetration of online access with only 62% of the population able to access the internet).

Which, in turn, can be seen as a partial explanation for why businesses in Scotland have a slight reluctance to engage online – if with basics like a website.

But the next time you see someone going ‘we’re all on the interwebs’ just pause and ask if everyone really is. Equally, ask if everyone needs to be on there.

The point of this post isn’t to be digitally dismissive, it’s a reality check but also to remind the digital advocates that not everyone wants to be all-singing all dancing online. Some do – businesses and individuals – and we should help them, but we should never make others feel pressured into being online.

And similarly, those who go ‘digital marketing is the only way in the future! Billboards and newspapers are dead’ should remember that you should never have your eggs all in one basket if you want to do the maximum good or ROI from your digital work.