It’s there in black and white…

Marketers will always have an affinity for print advertising.  It’s one of our most valuable targeting and reach-extending media. It has shelf life, and it’s extraordinary in its ability to match the advertising message with the editorial content.

However, the media landscape has evolved – and continues to evolve with lightening speed.  For print to remain competitive within our marketing mix, we offer 10 “pleas” to get the print industry to the head of the class. The following were presented at the June 16 ANA Print Advertising Forum held at the Grand Hyatt in New York City:

1. Help marketers understand print’s cause/effect contribution to generating results and building brands long-term. We need to understand more why print is the medium of choice for marketers to achieve their near term and strategic objectives.

2. Give us issue-specific circulation and cumulative data that show how an audience builds over time. Identify how that data is most specifically relevant for our brands target audience. Data is great – but it must be relevant and have targeted focused value.

3. Give us reader involvement insights that help us understand the unique connections publications have with readers. How do readers “get cozy” with the publications and show us how that affinity cascades to the advertised brands.

4. Tap into the creative energy that permeates editorial pages, and give advertisers some new, innovative, branded ways to sponsor publications. The relationship with print has to become broader, more integrated, more involved with a range of communications alternatives. We have to leverage them together to create enough “punch” to cut through the clutter and deliver an “embracing” message.

5. Reduce the long lead times to secure space and submit materials to monthly magazines. There really is no excuse for not making this happen. Publications need to examine their internal process chains and find ways to cut needless time out of their production cycle – to make it more accommodative to advertisers.

6. This one’s for agencies.  Find new, cost efficient ways for us to test print creative – and to test more frequently. With technological advances and the ability to transfer digital images of the web, there are clearly ways of expanding cost effective opportunities to understand the effectiveness of alternative print creative.

7. This one’s also for agencies. Raise the creative bar.  Put some of your senior talent on print advertising.  We want intelligent, visually exciting breakthrough print campaigns. This one has been talked about for years – and I just don’t get why print is always taking a back seat to electronic media. Recognizing the size of the investment in print vehicles, print creative must take a prominent stance in the minds of the agency creative management team

8. Either justify or end the practice – once and for all – of absurd bleed charges. Enough said. Let’s make this happen and let this old, antiquated legacy cost die a quick and painless death. They have no place in today’s marketing cost structure – particularly as the emphasis on marketing accountability has taken front and center position with CMO’s and CEO’s.

9. Either justify or end the practice of surcharges for national newspaper advertising in local editions. Fees should be based on value delivered – that’s why this doesn’t make sense.  

10. Get with the digital program!  Print media should be the leaders – not the followers – in this exciting realm. There is an expanding bundle of opportunities that will open up new vistas for everyone in the communications business – particularly those in the print arena. Do it now and make the world safe for the world of opportunity.

Comments

[Jason E. Klein]

Bob,

Re: Your Point #9

I appreciate your comments. There are no surcharges to national advertisers for ads placed via the Newspaper National Network LP within most of our 16 targeted categories of advertising. This was one of the reasons underlying our formation over a decade ago.

Jason E. Klein
Newspaper National Network LP
jklein@nnnlp.com
www.nnnlp.com

[Todd Butler]

You are as myopic as the rest of the print industry. Number one on your list should have been "add rich media and Internet connectivity to print advertising!"

Everything we do in direct mail should be turned into Multimedia Mail. Multimedia Mail is the integration of print advertising, interactive CD/DVDs, and the Internet. By adding a CD to our print advertising we can deliver all of the rich media programming promised by on line advertisers to 100% of the audience. Not just the 48% that have broadband connections.

Multimedia Mail leverages the advantages of targeted print messaging with one click access to the Internet.

Its time we quit doing the same-old, same-old and start dominating the future of advertisng.

Todd Butler
Butler Mailing Services, Inc.
toddb@butlermail.com
www.ekeymailer.com