Folio recently published a great article discussing why print will make a comeback in 2011. Here's a direct link to the article: http://www.foliomag.com/2010/seven-reasons-print-will-make-comeback-2011

1. Getting Attention: Have you noticed how many fewer magazines and print newsletters you are getting in the mail these days? I don't know about you, but I definitely pay more attention to my print mail.  There's just less mail, so more attention is paid to each piece. Opportunity? Less traditional publishers are printing magazines today, which leaves opportunities for content marketers.

2. The Focus on Customer Retention: In a soon-to-be-released research study conducted by Junta42 and MarketingProfs, customer retention was the most important goal for marketers when it came to content marketing outside of basic brand awareness.  Historically, the reason why custom print magazines and newsletters were developed by brands was for customer retention purposes.  We have a winner!

3. No Audience Development Costs: Publishers expend huge amounts of time and money qualifying subscribers to send out their magazines. Many times, publishers need to invest multiple dollars per subscriber per year for auditing purposes (They send direct mail, they call, they call again so that the magazine can say they that their subscribers have requested the magazine. This is true for controlled (free) trade magazines).  

So, let's say, a publisher's cost per subscriber per year is $2 and their distribution is one hundred thousand.  That's $200,000 per year for audience development.  

That's a cost that marketers don't have to worry about.  If marketers want to distribute a magazine to their customers, they just use their customer mailing list. That's a big advantage.

4. What's Old Is New Again: Social media, online content and iPad applications are all part of the marketing mix today. Still, what excites marketers and media buyers is what IS NOT being done.  They want to do something different...something new. It's hard to believe, but I've heard many marketers talk about leveraging print as something new in their marketing mix. Unbelievable.

5. Customers Still Need to Ask Questions: We love the Internet because buyers can find answers to almost anything. But where do we go to think about what questions we should be asking? I talked to a publisher last week who said this:

"The web is where we go to get answers but print is where we go to ask questions."

The print vehicle is still the best medium on the planet for thinking outside the box and asking yourself tough questions based on what you read. It's lean back versus lean forward. If you want to challenge your customers (like Harvard Business Review does), print is a viable option.

6. Print Still Excites People: I talked to a journalist recently who said it's harder and harder to get people to agree to an interview for an online story.  But mention that it will be a printed feature and executives rearrange their schedule. The printed word is still perceived as more credible to many people than anything on the web. It goes to the old adage, "If someone invested enough to print and mail it, it must be important."

Whether that's true or not, that is still a widely-held perception.

7. Unplug: More and more people are actively choosing the unplug, or disconnect themselves from digital media. I'm doing this more myself. I'm finding myself turning off my phone and email more to engage with printed material.  A year ago I didn't see this coming.  Today, I relish the opportunities when I can't be reached for comment.

If I'm right, many of your customers (especially busy executives) are feeling the same. Your print communication may be just what they need.  

Online content marketing is definitely here to stay.  Yes to social media, apps and the rest of it.  But don't forget that print can still play an important role in your overall content marketing mix.

From The Economist - full story here

Newspapers have escaped cataclysm by becoming leaner and more focused

Jun 10th 2010

“PRINT is going to live longer than people think,” asserts Mathias Döpfner, the boss of Axel Springer. Perhaps it will in central Europe. The publisher of Bild and Die Welt recently recorded the most profitable first quarter in its history. The profit margin on its German national newspapers is a startling 27%. The firm is expanding into Poland. If newspapers are in crisis, Mr Döpfner says, he likes crisis.

A year ago the mere survival of many newspapers seemed doubtful. It had become clear that the young, in particular, were getting much of their news online. Readers were flitting from story to story, rarely paying. Advertising too was moving online, but not to newspapers’ websites. Rather, it was being swallowed by search engines. The classified-ad market was ravaged by free listings websites such as Craigslist. A deep recession, received wisdom had it, would surely finish off newspapers, which have high fixed costs in the form of journalists and printing presses.

In some ways the pain proved even greater than analysts expected. The Newspaper Association of America reports that print and online advertising has fallen by 35% since the first quarter of 2008. Circulation has dropped alarmingly too. Yet almost all newspapers have survived, albeit with occasional help from the bankruptcy courts. American newspaper firms like McClatchy stayed mostly profitable even as revenues plunged (see chart). Some companies are now worth ten times as much as in the spring of 2009, although they remain far from pre-recession heights.

Steep cover-price rises have helped. But for the most part newspapers have cut their way out of crisis. In the past year McClatchy reduced payroll costs by 25%. Many publications closed bureaus and forced journalists to take unpaid leave. There have been clever adaptations, too. At Gannett, another American firm, 46 local titles now carry national and international news from USA Today, the firm’s national paper. A group of New Jersey newspapers jointly produces features and editorials. Bob Dickey, who runs Gannett’s community papers, says they have realised there is no need to work out what to say about the Gulf oil leak seven times.

Magazine advertising continues to be a vital ad medium, driving continuous business to companies with every ad they place. If you're going to buy magazine advertising, buy it the easy way. Some things to keep in mind when you're planning your next marketing campaign -

1. Magazine readership has grown over the past five years. (Source: MRI)
2. Average paid subscriptions reached nearly 300 million in 2009.
   (Source: MPA estimates based on ABC first and second half 2009 data)
3. 4 out of 5 adults read magazines. (Source: MRI)
4. Magazines deliver more ad impressions than TV or Web in half-hour period. (Source: McPheters & Company)
5. Magazine readership in the 18 to 34 segment is growing. (Source: MRI)
6. Since Facebook was founded, magazines gained more than one million young adult readers. (Source: MRI)
7. The average reader spends 43 minutes reading each issue. (Source: MRI)
8. Magazines are the No. 1 medium of engagement – across all dimensions measured. Simmons' Multi-Media Engagement Study find magazines continue to score significantly higher than TV or the Internet in ad receptivity and all of the other engagement dimensions, including "trustworthy" and "inspirational." (Source: Simmons Multi-Media Engagement Study)
9. Magazines and magazine ads garner the most attention: BIGresearch studies show that when consumers read magazines they are much less likely to engage with other media or to take part in non-media activities compared to the users of TV, radio or the Internet. (Source: BIGresearch Simultaneous Media Usage Study)
10. Magazines outperform other media in driving positive shifts in purchase consideration/intent. (Source: Dynamic Logic)

Magazines rank No. 1 at influencing consumers to start a search online – higher than newer media options. (Source: BIGresearch Simultaneous Media Usage Study) 

This is probably a really bad idea for lots of reasons. Coerced leads are usually of low value for advertisers and story ideas that are funded by something as valueless as information, especially without any intention to buy, are likely to be below par. However, interesting idea. 

 

Interesting points relating to the IPad by Steve Smith of MIN Online in his column, Eye on Digital Media:

IPad Reality Check

Whether the tablet platform is in fact the game changer many publishers
want it to be, it is easy to let the glare of the iPad blind us
to some realities of the platform that are apparent to those of us who
have used the device extensively since day one.

1. The iPad will change your Web strategy. At a recent min Webinar
on magazines developing for e-books and tablets, I was surprised to see
that excitement for the iPad exposed the ongoing frustrations publishers
have with the Web. Low user engagement, brand dilution, poor monetization, and poor
design sense all seemed to characterize the experience of many magazines on the Web.
Condé Nast vp/editorial operations Rick Levine showed a chart comparing the monthly
time spent with Gentlemen's Quarterly in print, online, and in the iPhone app. For the
first three issues that GQ appeared on the iPhone, its users spent about 70 minutes per
issue, on par with the print GQ and about five times longer than time spent per unique
user at gq.com. If these new mobile screens take off, publishers will be rethinking and
perhaps scaling back the Web strategies they have been developing for years.

2. Not so fast. Apps now compete with the Web. One of the unanticipated consequences
of the tablet platform's larger screen is that full Web browsing is now much more viable
than it was on smart phones. The tablet format diminishes that rationale for an app and
so a publisher's branded magazine app will compete with its own Web site.
Entertainment Weekly has tried to recognize the divide by integrating a Web site
viewer with its good Must List app. USA Today engages the problem by re-engineering
its Web content so thoroughly into a better touch-driven experience in the app that
you don't bother hitting the brand on the Web.

3. The ads on the iPad suck. I am not sure why these haven't been raised yet. Most
of the early ad units in magazine apps rely almost entirely on the impact of the original
print ad or pull in a tv spot. There are very few consumer brand apps except for
a forgettable trifle from The Gap and a more ambitious athlete trainer from Nike. The
real opportunity for publishers with in-app advertising is to develop mini-apps for
clients that run within the media’s app and truly leverage the touch and multimedia
capabilities of the format.

4. Cost and standardization will be the choke points to adoption of tablet magazines.
Publishers appear to be digging in their heels over price and seem ready to
defy the loud consumer sentiment against high single-issue pricing. If "Tablet-ized"
magazines are going to keep "enhanced" pricing for "enhanced" iPad magazines, they
need to make a much better case for where they are adding the value.

Being on the iPad with some cool navigation and added videos or little spinning
twirly things does not earn a publisher multiples more than what a reader pays for a
subscription. Publishers need to start thinking about including tangible assets like
special subscriber-only utility apps or in-app games and puzzles. And speaking of
spinning twirly things...stop reinventing the wheel. It is irritating and ultimately
counterproductive to have readers learn a new interface for every digital magazine.
The bottom-line lesson that overarches all of the above is that publishers should not
mistake the Tablet app environment as a full break with the past. Users are bringing
certain expectations for pricing and usability that are informed by a decade of Web
experience. Magazine apps have to share a platform with the Web, and what your brand
does on the tablet platform will have to work in concert with print and Web strategies.
If you think that the iPad promises a simple "reset" of the digital relationship
between publishers and readers, then think harder.