Life with Print/ The Power of Print

Integrated Marketing, Multi-Channel Distribution, Viral Marketing, Glance Media are a few of the many descriptors currently used to describe the new business models being implemented by advertisers, marketers and media strategists.  Our consumer society is abound with new devices, many hand held, as primary sources for communications and intra-connectivity which leads traditional, legacy medias such as television, radio and Print to ask the larger questions “Where do we fit in?”.  Is Print truly a waning media?  

After many years of market research and focus studies, in affiliation with The Print Council, The Digital Printing Council, The Direct Marketing Association and the United States Post Office, Sappi Fine Paper’s Life with Print booklet and presentation reveals that Print is not only very much alive, albeit in transition and evolving, but is still the foundational cornerstone to successful sales and marketing strategies.  Print, in combination with other media, ensures that advertising and media messages reach their intended audience through a comprehensive, 360º approach: that is, using several, diverse media, all with a specific call-to-action, based on the advertiser’s goals, each reinforcing the compounded message but all together ensuring the recipient is aware and engaged in media campaign. This addresses one of the principle challenges advertisers and marketers are posed with in today’s media rich environment: securing the permission of the recipient to be invited into the homes, hand held instruments and computers to deliver their message. 

It is without a doubt that the internet delivers the most efficient communication channel. Unfortunately, not getting the message deleted before it is even opened and the message delivered continues to plague multi-media marketers.  The solution discovered is that Print drives viewers to the internet most successfully due to the fact that Print has the highest trust quotient of all media surveyed.  Once the on-line invitation is taken advantage of, the prospect is asked to fill out a brief profile in order to better service their needs and often rewarded for doing so. Having filled out the profile the push-pull relationship commences and the prospect will in the future open the e-mail having recognized the sender from previous correspondence and the sales and marketing pas-de-deux proceeds with the permission of the recipient.  This then can lead to receiving text messages, direct mail, and a larger sense of “social computing” to targeted audiences.

While it has been said that “content has become media independent”, it has certainly been proven time and again that Print, as an integral part of the whole, ensures higher levels of responses and sales. Print versus other media has the highest retention value, the highest Return On Investment, highest Return On Customer and, most recently shown, the highest Return on Time- most valued by customers- and is recognized as the best way to build a Brand and Brand Loyalty.  While Print may not hold the same market share as it once did, after five hundred years of being the primary mode of communications, it continues to prove its value and efficacy in an ever changing, ever evolving market.