Is print dead?

This is a question that has been buzzing around the marketing world since the rapid surge of the Internet and social media. While many businesses have completely migrated their advertising efforts to the web because of its cost effectiveness, exposure potential and convenience, print still maintains its stance as a powerful and necessary component of an ad campaign. Let’s take a closer look at print media and some advantages it has over its digital counterparts.

Tangibility – A print piece is a physical thing. Magazines and newspapers can stay in houses or offices for months or years, while Internet ads can disappear into cyber space instantaneously.

Credibility – There is something about print that gives a sense of legitimacy. The saturation of popups and banner ads on the web can be overwhelming and the fear of spam and viruses is enough make people weary of clicking. There is no imminent danger in a print ad.

Branding – Print ads are excellent for solidifying your brand identity. Your ads should have a consistent aesthetic in terms of fonts, colors and types of images to establish brand recognition.

Target Marketing – Placing ads in publications such as specialty magazines can effectively reach niche audiences that may be more difficult to target online.

More Engaging – Consumers are more engaged when reading printed material, unlike websites, which are often skimmed in as little as a 15 second visit. A study shows that people read digital screen text 20% – 30% slower than printed paper.

Fewer Print Ads – With more and more businesses relying solely on the Internet for their advertising needs, the decline of print publication can actually be used as a marketing advantage. The publications are less crowded, allowing more room for your ad to shine, and possibly even cheaper prices for that ad space.

Despite what you may have heard, reports of the “death of print” have been greatly exaggerated. A survey in April by Deloitte found that 88% of magazine readers in the UK still prefer to consume articles via print. While half of respondents to its state-of-the-media survey (2,276 UK consumers, aged 14 to 75) owned a smartphone, 35% subscribed to at least one printed magazine in 2011.

A lot of people have discovered their opinions and voices writing blogs and sharing in social networks. A natural next step is to create something permanent

But it’s not just amateurs who are responsible. Some of the Internet’s big players – fashion sites such as style.com, asos.com and netaporter.com, online kids’ game Moshi Monsters and yes, even Google itself – are now publishing print magazines, using traditional media to refresh the parts of their business model that other solutions can’t reach.

“Students are often writing blogs anyway,” adds Richards. “The beauty of online is that it allows them to instantaneously share with a larger audience. But the relationship with books is different. Kids take books home and they can keep them.” To Richards, whose students often come from underprivileged backgrounds, that’s an important factor: as he explains, these children “often only have religious books at home”.

Which brings us neatly to Google. The very same organisation that was once accused of looking to kill off print with its digitised Google Books Library Project now has its own print journal, Think Quarterly, created by The Church of London creative agency. Like Cremer, Danny Miller, the company’s founder/MD, points out that, “magazines are simply very effective ways of engaging with people. To the greatest extent, it just seems like common sense to us that any company would want to communicate with people through print.”

Print is not dead. Print is where words go to die.

Too many of the ideas trapped on pages end up, at best, in unused archives or, at worst, in recyclers’ pulp, when they should be online: searchable, discoverable, linkable, part of the conversation.

In this new world, the medium is meaningless. Media define themselves by the pipes that feed them but the public does not; we want what we want when, where, and how we want it. The wise media company will be there with us; the stubborn ones will die.

Print is the perfect introduction to an informed debate and to the deep resources of the web. The words and pictures in print or on a magazine’s web site become the basis for searching, linking, talking and ranting for those with the time or inclination to do so. Is the web is the friend of print, not its killer.

So don’t just worry about bloggers or how one medium helps another. Break free of the shackles of media and ask: What are you, really?

The question, is print dead?

The answer of course is, no, it is neither dead nor dying, but the analysis also suggests a near moment in time when digital revenues will surpass print revenues for publishers. So, it isn’t about death, but rather about the realignment of our resources and expectations.

So, in this projected scheme of things to come print survives and so does a regenerated and revived publishing industry.

Therefore for the future Dan & Linzi are OK

“PRINT IS DEAD – LONG LIVE THE PRINT !!!