I wasn't sure who Millennials really were - so here is the Wikipedia definition:

Generation Y, also known as the Millennial Generation (or Millennials),^[1][2] Generation Next,^[3] Net Generation,^[4] Echo Boomers,^[5], describes the demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates for when the Millennial generation starts and ends, and commentators have used birth dates ranging somewhere from the mid-1970s^[6] to the mid 1990s, with some sources including as late as the early 2000's.

Great news for newspapers and direct mail but a little bit hard to believe. Full story from MarketingCharts.com here:

Most Millennials' Store Choices Influenced by Print Media

Direct mail (92%) and newspapers (91%) are the media most Millennials say affect their store choices, ahead of digital channels such as visiting a store website using a computer (84%) or receiving emails from retailers (78%), according to [download page] a December 2011 report from Nielsen. Data from “The Evolution of Circulars: From Print to Digital” indicates that when it comes to shopping, Millennials are more tech-savvy than Gen X adults, being more likely to have their store choices influenced by smartphones or mobile phones, social media sites, and retailer emails.

Printed Circulars Lead Overall

Printed circulars (direct mail, newspaper inserts, and in-store) lead the overall shopper popularity contest, with roughly 60% of consumers looking at them once a week. According to Nielsen, the only electronic vehicle demonstrating equivalent reach was retailer email. According to a study released in December 2011 by Epsilon Targeting, when it comes to learning about new products, American consumers also prefer direct mail: almost 3 in 5 report that they enjoy getting postal mail from brands about new products, compared to just 43% who say they enjoy getting emails from brands on new products.

Although high tech circular touchpoints do not enjoy extensive reach, they do see strong weekly usage: Nielsen data shows that social media (45%) and smartphone or mobile phone (39%) weekly use rates outstrip in-store vehicles such as print (38%), kiosk (24%), and TV (21%), with tablet devices also demonstrating healthy weekly usage (35%).

Digital preference rates are also strong when asking shoppers about the future: more than 70% of shoppers expressed a desire for basic digital delivery (store website using computer or retailer email) in the future, and about one-third wanted social media or smartphone applications. Nearly 90% wished to continue receiving paper at home or in-store.

Active Online Presence Critical

According to the report, 18% of internet users would not buy a personal care item without first consulting online, while 17% check online first before purchasing a food item. And although just 20% of store shoppers visit grocery/drug retailer sites, those 1 in 5 consumers who research online first spend approximately 30% more in the store.

Digital Efforts Lack Sophistication

Although most retailers use digital channels such as online circulars (93%), site product filters (81%), shopping lists and recipes (81%), and active Twitter feeds (78%), Nielsen analysis shows that many are not taking advantage of other, more sophisticated approaches. Indeed, only slightly more than 2 in 5 use approaches such as circular email subscription (44%), circular search ads (44%), and circular via Facebook (41%), while just 22% use circular item search ads. According to a Compete study released in June 2011, many online consumers now treat Facebook like a product circular: more than half (56.2%) say they visit the Facebook page of a retailer/consumer product company to keep up to date on sales and promotions, almost double the percentage who give the second-most-popular answer, learning about a specific retailer (29%).

About the Data: Nielsen’s findings are based on an extensive survey among an 11,000-shopper subset of the Nielsen Homescan panel.

Now this is Direct Response! Article from the New York times, joke courtesy of Jim Jinks:

Washington Examiner Helps Capture Fugitives

The Washington Examiner is known around the nation’s capital for its conservative bent, bite-size news reports and price that cannot be beat: it is given away on the Metro.

But in law enforcement circles, The Examiner has also become a valuable crime-fighting tool, one that investigators turn to when their detective work has hit a wall.

The results have been remarkable.

About once a month, the United States Marshals Service in the Washington area apprehends a fugitive caught with the help of Examiner readers. So far, marshals have rounded up 24 suspects after receiving calls from people who read about a fugitive in the paper.

The captures are the result of a weekly item in The Examiner called “Most Wanted,” which has featured a fugitive for the last two and a half years. Readers are provided a number to call if they think they have any information about the case. More often than not, they do.

The marshals said that even when “Most Wanted” articles did not lead directly to a capture, they could yield a tip that in some way helped an investigation — like an old address where the fugitive had been hiding out.

Calls can trickle in long after the article was published, as anxious associates or relatives of fugitives decide to act on guilty feelings.

“Either it’s been eating away at them or they finally got the courage to give us the information,” said Robert Fernandez, commander of the Marshals’ Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force. “They may be friends with the individual, and they had a falling out. Or they’ve been in a relationship and then they broke up.”

Sometimes fugitives will see themselves in the paper and decide to give themselves up. “They panic,” Mr. Fernandez said. “That flushes them out of their hiding places.”

The kinds of criminals caught by the authorities are often the worst of the worst: rapists, child molesters, drug dealers and killers. And sometimes the confrontation with citizens can be dramatic.

Andre Stevenson, who had been convicted of a sexual offense involving a 15-year-old and had failed to register with the authorities, was spotted loitering outside a Southeast Washington school by an Examiner reader. A group of people surrounded Mr. Stevenson and held him there until the police arrived.

The “Most Wanted” column is a feature in The Examiner’s Crime and Punishment section, which provides often-colorful coverage of crime and justice in the Washington area.

The lead writer, Scott McCabe, has become the capital’s version of John Walsh, host of the long-running television series “America’s Most Wanted.”

“It’s kind of validating for us as reporters,” Mr. McCabe said. “A lot of times you write stories, you put a lot of work into them. They’re hard hitting, you thought. And the only response you hear is the sound of crickets. You wonder: Is anyone listening? Does anyone care?”

The response to “Most Wanted,” Mr. McCabe said, shows that his readers do care.

The paper is certainly not shy about drawing a little attention to its success. “Looks like The Examiner provided just the nudge needed to get him in,” said a recent article about a reader tip leading to the capture of a man with a record of assault with a deadly weapon, cocaine distribution and domestic violence.

Given the paper’s conservative tone, might the high rate of success with reader tips say something about a certain lust for justice among right-leaning Examiner readers?

The editor, Stephen G. Smith, said he thought not, saying that many of the captures take place in poor neighborhoods that are not heavily Republican.

“It would be nice to think our conservative readers are these nice upstanding, law-abiding citizens, but I don’t think that’s why the Marshals Service is getting all these phone calls,” Mr. Smith said.

“The people who get turned in are in really pretty tough neighborhoods,” he said. “You wouldn’t think that the folks who are reading our editorials are living where these folks are.”

 From the New York Times, Full Story here.

Although the article focuses on TV Infomercials, some of these products have become big print advertisers as well.

Infomercial Products Take One on the Chin

By ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN

IT may come as no surprise that in the February issue of Consumer Reports, where the product-testing magazine rates 15 infomercial products like the Snuggie (“The blanket with sleeves!”) and the ShamWow (“You’ll say wow every time!”), nearly all are found to be lacking.

A scene from a Snuggie infomercial. Consumer Reports said the Snuggie's sleeves were too long for some and that walking in it could be cumbersome.

What might be more surprising, though, is that editors thought subscribers — savvy shoppers who scrutinize the magazine’s ratings with intensity to guide their purchases — would even give a second thought to buying, say, a SlapChop (“Dice, chop and mince in seconds.”).

But Jeff Blyskal, a senior editor at Consumer Reports who wrote the unsigned article, said that while many smirked at infomercials — also known as direct-response ads — they also fell under their spell.

“We tend to laugh at these commercials but they are very powerful persuaders,” Mr. Blyskal said in a telephone interview. “You say, ‘I’m too smart to buy this,’ but when you laugh you kind let your guard down and get drawn into it.”

In the article, Mr. Blyskal quotes Martin Lindstrom, the author of the book “Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy,” who says that infomercials “take viewers on a psychological roller-coaster ride.”

That ride, Mr. Blyskal writes, “starts with dramatizations of a problem you didn’t know you had, followed by the incredible solution, then a series of ever more amazing product benefits, bonuses, and giveaways, all leading to the final thrilling plunge of an unbelievably low price.”

Although I believe in the power of print as much as the next guy in the newspaper and magazine industry, this seems a little too good to be true, even for me:

From www.PrintInTheMix.com (a great resource for print related facts)

October 2009 -- A study performed by BrandScience for the UK’s Outdoor Advertising Association (OAA) has found that the return on investment for newspaper and magazine advertising is higher than that for TV and outdoor advertising.

For every £1 spent on newspaper and magazine advertising, “bricks and mortar” retailers get a sales increase of £6.23. For every £1 retailers spend on TV and outdoor poster advertising, revenues increase by £3.57.  For these retailers, online advertising generated £2.23 in sales for every £1 spent. If production costs are taken into account, outdoor advertising outperform TV and close the gap with print.

Whether you are on the buying or selling side of the print advertising equation, we all ultimately answer to the same person - the end-user, also know as the consumer. 

People who get wrapped up in sales too often forget that advertising only happens when these end-users want to buy the stuff that is being advertised. No sales means no revenue for the advertiser and no revenue means no advertising, in most cases.

So it is worth noting the apparent difficulty that one of the gods of direct selling - QVC - has run into recently. Last week QVC laid off 700 employees in a cost saving measure. No one, except people who live alone with lots of cats, usually admits to watching QVC but I will (and I own no cats). And in the weeks and months to follow, I suggest you do too.

Here is why: No one is better at selling than QVC. They sell stuff that no one really needs but they do a masterful job of knowing what people want. It will be very instructive to see how they adapt their product offerings and approach to a rapidly degrading economy.

People involved in the selling or buying of print have a lot to learn from QVC. The solutions they come up with to battle the downturn may just offer a road map for the rest of us on what consumers are buying and how to sell it.