Print is alive

Print is alive and well - it just has many more associates. This blog may be an unusual platform to talk of print publications, but for those who fear electronic offerings will make print products obsolete, American Business Media offers a reality check for you.  Last week, hundreds of top level media professionals gathered in Boca Raton, Florida to wrangle the questions of how to make money using electronic properties and how to resuscitate print products. The overwhelming response from CEOs like Mike Marchesano of VNU; Jim Casella of Reed Business Information; and Ken Gazzola executive vp of the Aviation Week Group, is that print still king when it comes to business media. Tools like blogs, Web sites and e-centric offerings create reach, but trade on the brand of the printed page.

“It is clear print is not going away,” said Bob Metcalfe, Ethernet inventor and keynote speaker at ABM’s Spring Meeting.
This is a bit like the epiphany of the food industry some years ago. After the creation of every box, bag, frozen and ethnic flavor construct possible, the food industry started holding conferences that said “it’s all about taste.”

Well, publishing is also about taste, taste and substance. In the business-to-business space, valuable content feeds industry leaders, and helps them make decisions to better their industries. Business-to-business serves experts in any given field. They might bite on novelty ingredients here and there, but what they really want is something they can sink their teeth into, and that is clearly print media with a side of e-centric – like this little endeavor.

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Comments

[Chuck]

I'm curious. Who's writing?

[Steve]

Chuck, good point. Right now, it's an aggregate effort, but the bylines should indeed be a part of the posting

se

[Paul B. Beatty]

PRINT IS ALIVE
Print never died.
The power of print plus web gives the advertiser the qualified reach, at the lowest price,generating the most response with proven results.
Magazines can no longer sell reach and cost alone. The must sell reach ,readership and results.Print drives more buyers to sellers webs sites than any other medium. It generates direct contat with the reader and the advertiser instantly.
It is time to sell our value and stop selling print against web.The power of print plus web must be the number one media buy based on value to the reader and the advertiser.
All that must be done is to start selling its value.

Agree?

[Josh Gordon]

B-to-B print advertising has become the “accidental brand” of the traditional media world. No other traditional media (broadcast, cable, newspapers, radio, consumer magazines etc.) has had it’s core competencies so challenged and had new strengths emerge without there being a concerted effort to measure and redefine those new core competencies.

The Yankelovich/Harris Study, good in it’s day (early 2001), now only compounds the problem. As we tout a study that shows how print, online, and tradeshows “play nice” together we are not aggressively advocating prints emerging strengths a clutter cutter nor are we talking steps to neutralize our critics. In case you have not noticed, there is a lot of B-to-B print bashing going on out there.

The very fact that we are having a conversation about how print is “still alive” shows how far down this has gone. We need to turn this around and talk instead how print is being reinvented as a dynamic force in B-to-B marketing, and with new documented usefulness in a more complex media environment. Also, we need to become advocates of new ways to use creative in print that embrace the new more complex environment it will play in.

Josh Gordon

[Jeff Reinhardt]

Is it really about print versus other channels?
Several years ago many made the mistake of heralding the internet as the future and that print magazines would go away....
of course those of us who grew up with print knew that this was wrong, but like other media inventions it would find its place in the mix.
Just as trumpting the internet as the holy grail and forgetting about print would have been a mistake, focusing too much on print (for the sake of print) would also be a mistake.
Each channel has its pros and cons, each customer has different problems and goals..... together they must be matched to provide the best solution.
If B2B is truly about bringing buyers and sellers together then print, online, newsletters, conferences , trade shows , blogs, etc ... must all be considered and mixed appropriately.
I prefer that we champion B2B solutions whatever format/channel they take.

Jeff

[paul conley]

Jeff,
You still make more sense than most anyone else in this business.
I've never understood the fears, obsessions and hand-wringing that accompany the emergence of new media. Nor do I understand the print-is-dead triumphalism among some new-media enthusiasts.
You're right, matching different media solutions to different customer needs is the answer.
For that to happen, two things must happen first.
1) The old-timers must discover the joy of change and experimentation.
2) The newcomers must rediscover the beauty and utility of words on paper.

[Tom Cintorino]

The more us publishers can differentiate the products within our own arsenals, the stronger each product will stand on its own merits. Remember that our collective v1.0 websites were basically the magazine content online. That in itself is not adding value. Archives online is not really adding value. Adding search capability (of the archives) is adding value. Web-based tools, collaborative media solutions, databases, etc. add value. The more we address reader needs by truely leveraging the Internet's capabilities, the more our magazines will shine for the unique value they bring to our overall product arsenals.

[Paul B. Beatty]

Tom:
Adding "search" to the print product is the "power of print plus web". Every magazine has the data to do it. All that must be done is the doing.
Paul Beatty

[Josh Gordon]

When dealing with our advertisers I must agree with our ever-insightful Jeff Reinhardt that offering “the best solution for the best problem” is the only practical approach. But my fear is that as we embrace this approach we abdicate our role as advocates. Other media associations, especially the Internet Advertising Bureau have used research and promotion to aggressively lay out clear advantages of using their media as opposed to competing media. Right now, no one is advocating B-to-B print in this way.

I believe there is a huge opportunity here for advocacy. My advertisers who are excited about B-to-B print today are NOT excited about print for the same reasons as they were ten years ago. Things have changed. While B-to-B print looks very different to our advertisers from a benefit point of view, that shift to new advantages has not been talked about, measured, or advocated.

Personally, I have had huge success in selling the excitement of my new online media offerings. As with any shiny new toy excitement comes easily. But I also am excited about B-to-B print. I believe it is also a shiny new toy. I take the time to help my advertisers see the new advantages of using it in today’s media environment.

I, and every other space sales rep out there, need help we are not getting. Sometimes our personal enthusiasm for B-to-B print needs to be backed up by research.

Josh Gordon

[Paul B. Beatty]

Merging online technology with print has created new marketing opportunities. The combination of print plus web brings buyers and sellers together ,within minutes at the lowest cost, tracking the source and proving retun on investment.Plus.... maximize the print assets into new revenue with e-commerce by selling books, tapes,back issues webinar,seminars,e-learning,research,products and more.What is the problem?

[Josh Gordon]

The problem I see is not in marketing theory where greater media synergy leads to happier customers and greater sales. The problem see is on the street.

I am a huge believer in the Internet and of integrated selling. As an independent publishers rep, a full third of my revenue now comes from selling online products. When I sell my online offerings I feel the wind at my back. Every month there are at least a dozen articles in the general press on the growing importance of the Web, and online there is great research documenting the effectiveness of any web offering I am selling from a variety of sources.

But when I slide out the B-to-B magazine part of my presentation I am on my own. While a few articles in the general press tepidly talk about a come back of B-to-B print, online I find far more research, largely funded by competitive media, saying that print is on the way out.

On the street, I find my biggest print fans are people who have not yet embraced the Web. Among my clients who have embraced the Web I find a creeping negative buzz regarding print filtering into my conversations. Not to worry, I have become expert at redefining the benefits of print in the new media environment, and the ad space stays.

I describe B-to-B print as the marquee of the B-to-B media environment, standing above in a crowded marketplace and attracting attention for an advertisers message whether customers are online or not.

Reminding advertisers that their customers do not spend their whole business lives online; I describe B-to-B print as the onramp to the Internet.

I describe print as the last place where there are comparatively few vehicles competing for a customers attention (a claim my print-only colleagues find hard to believe).

I describe print as a place where a thoughtful, reflective connection can still be made with a reader/customer. (I am covered here thanks to research by our friends at the MPA)

All of the above benefits can be measured. And I am sure there are emerging benefits other publishers and space reps are using that I have not thought of. Among ourselves we need a dialogue to redefine the benefits of B-to-B print in the new media environment. Then we need to document and communicate these benefits aggressively to the advertising community.

On the street, B-to-B print is under attack from every competing media. Thus far, our best collective response sounds like, “but B-to-B print works so well with other media.” Again, back to the street; amid the din of well documented competitive claims, this message plays like the advocates of B-to-B print have lost the will, imagination, and enthusiasm to compete.

I don’t want to end on a negative note. As a positive step, can we start a blog section that invites posts on how publishers and space salespeople are redefining the benefits of using B-to-B print in the new, more complicated, more electronic, B-to-B marketing environment?

Josh Gordon

[Paul B. Beatty]

PUBLISHING WITHOUT FEAR

The merging of technology and print has challanged the managment of print and web.
What started out as one against the other is starting to change. Added values for the reader,and the advertiser have surfaced.
Once dreams of the "good old days" are now real.

The dream of bringing buyers and sellers together within minutes with a print to web connection would make the advertiser and the reader drool in the "good old days". The fact that the action would be tracked and measured would have salespeople selling nothing but ROI .

The dream of concentrating on readership and editorial content that demanded a must read for survival in the business to business community would be real.

The fear of change and the infection of pitting print against web is stupid. Every market depends on buyers and sellers being aware of each other. This is not a dream it is now. It is business to business publishing.

The major sin of publishing today is fear. The fear to do what the reader and the advertiser wants and needs.

Paul B. Beatty

[Jeff Reinhardt]

First- Thank you Paul and Josh for such nice comments regarding my thoughts......

Here's another real issue that is bugging me and could make a huge difference in B2B Print.

We have tens of millions of business executives that subscribe to our B2B franchises yet for the most part these readers do not spend a single dollar with us. Yes, some attend shows and a few purchase reports, but the majority demand great content, want more/better/faster yet are not willing to spend money for it. Of course this is only amplified with our content on the web.
Assuming that most B2B titles are controlled, imagine if every controlled subscriber sent it $1 each year. This would generate hundreds of millions of dollars for B2B print media.

While I'm on my soap box ..... be sure to check out the upcoming story in Folio: on "The Plop Factor". These same people who won't spend money for a print product, then have the nerve to complain about dwindling book sizes..... and the advertisers who are shifting their spending to online (as maybe they have to or should) are also complaining about the situation that they've caused.........

[Bill Pryor]

Print is near death.....for the moment, because of one simple reason. It's value and impact cannot be as easily measured as online media. Josh raises excellent print benefits in his note above, but at the end of his list he states "all these benefits can be measured". That might be true but the current perception is that those benefits are NOT being measured or quantified with nearly the same specificity that comes from many of the new online media. Partially that is a failure of BtoB publishers to promote and use measurement info.......partially, we may have to admit---it is a fundamental problem with print?

[Paul B. Beatty]

Bill:
Print to web can be measured. You can track readers going from the printed page to an advertisers web site. The technology is here . The problem is very few publishers are using it.
Paul Beatty

[Tom Koperniak]

Why would a Publisher or an Advertising Sales Representative not want to prove that a print ad sent a reader to that Advertiser's Web Site, to possibly start a sale? Would proving this event over and over and over again help sell more print ad space? I would think so. Can anyone tell me why it would not? Can anyone tell me why most Publishers do not track this activity? Why don't more magazine professionals talk about the Power of Print plus Web, instead of Print versus Web? In my mind, selling one helps you sell the other. It need not be an either-or relationship.