Can Print Survive?
Posted by Jaci Russo
RIP Print Media
The Nashville Business Journal’s recent article, Print is Not Dead, covers a recent luncheon for the American Marketing Association in Nashville. A panel of the largest ad agencies in Nashville discussed print media and shared their thoughts on the future of advertising.
These comments, as reported in the Nashville Business Journal, seem to be most telling regarding their thoughts about print media:
“Print is not dead. Print is very valuable going forward,” said Jeff Lipscomb, president of GS & F.
Jeffrey Buntin Jr, president and CEO of The Buntin Group, agreed.
“People still like to hold hands and walk in the park, and print is the same,” he said.
“I think it holds a creative preciousness that other mediums don’t,” he added, to applause.
That ‘creative preciousness’ that Buntin refers to is how the agencies feel about the print ads they design, not how the consumer feels about the media. There is no doubt that the loss of print as a viable advertising medium is a blow to the creative agencies that focus their talents on designing print ads. Those agencies, like the media they favor, are going the way of the dinosaur.
Shouldn’t the focus be on putting clients where their consumers are? Focusing on the kind of ads an agency wants to create just won’t cut it anymore.
Why would a consumer continue to choose a newspaper with out of date information? They aren’t. Consumers are getting news online. Consumers are researching products online. Consumers want to interact and engage with a brand online - mostly so they can actively be a part of the conversation instead of passively receiving a message through an ad.
Look at the industries that have been rocked by the ever changing technological landscape. Print media is just the latest, and it seems slowest, to evolve. How do you think Polaroid feels about all of the digital photography inventions of the past decade? Check out this AdAge video from the CMO of Kodak and you can get a glimpse into how much his world has changed.
So what does that mean for print? How do daily newspapers survive? What will happen to the ad agencies that are only focused on designing print ads?
Take a look at the survivors of the industrial revolution - the only solution is to evolve or die. Consumers still want and need the content but the delivery system has to change. The media outlets that can adapt will survive and even flourish. There is hope, but only a little, and only if they are willing to do things differently in order to get a different result.
