Who Will Save Print?
Great space has been given online and offline recently to tout the newest digital killer-app – a new e-reader which shall remain nameless – as the savior for the magazine industry. No more must we worry about how our ever-expanding arsenal of digital devices will destroy magazines; this one can help save them.
So imagine the consternation it must have caused when the CMO Council released a study that found that consumers actually prefer – gasp! – printed magazines over their digital counterparts. How many? Ninety percent of those surveyed said they’ll hang onto their print magazines, even with the option of an e-reader or online counterpart.
If this feels like deja vu all over again, it’s because it is. The obituaries for print have been many and myriad over the past two decades – and obviously wrong. While it is true that consumers have found much to love about the digital tools we now possess, it’s also true that they haven’t come close to giving up on print.
And why would they? To borrow a phrase from the digital lexicon, print is “user friendly”: It’s portable, visually compelling, highly effective and a real value. There’s no reason for users – sorry, consumers – to give up on it. For them, it’s not a choice of one or the other, it’s a matter of using both print and digital – for different objectives.
So, should we be surprised that nine out of 10 people want to hang onto their magazines? That’s in the past 11 years, as search engines have begun to rule our online lives, print magazine leadership has risen 4.5 percent? That print still delivers a higher level of engagement and returns a significantly higher response rate?
It’s not a surprise to marketers. Spending on all forms of print still dwarf the spend on online advertising (direct mail alone is more than $29 billion vs. $7.8 billion for Internet display ads).
Arguing about whether digital will supplant print next year or the year after that or the years after that misses the point. It’s not about independence, it’s about integration.
Time after time, marketers have proven that the two media work better together. Print is the “push” that complements the Web’s “pull.” As catalogers know well, a print piece not only drives additional traffic to the website, it increases the amount that people spend when they arrive.
Print’s demise may be overstated, but it would be just as foolish to ignore the growing dominance of digital. Smart marketers are finding ways to blend the two to create an even more powerful connection to their customers. Are you?