Print is dead. We've all heard that. And I completely agree...within certain parameters.
Newspapers are dying as a source of information. Books now are competing with e-readers, and video advertising has taken off even more in the past decade.
But in terms of advertising, print is not only not dead, it's experiencing a renaissance that not only disputes the oft-repeated line above, but leads many would-be advertising businesses astray from a tried-and-true means of garnering interest.
For starters, people still like to own things. Coffee table books, magazines, and other physical artifacts are still vastly preferred to blue light-laden pdfs on the internet that are ergonomically hard to read and even harder to remember and retain. Magazine print ads and books are selling more than before, not less.
And furthermore, money is the bottom line of advertising, and print ads result in an 80 percent response rate from consumers, compared to 45 percent with digital media. People are bombarded and inconvenienced by many digital ads, and so they've found a way to ignore that information. It's all so much cafeteria noise, and in that din of activity, people block out what isn't necessary.
People are less bombarded in real life and real time. When they get mail, they may roll their eyes at the pizza coupons.; they likely won't even use the coupons, but they will still order pizza that evening (or the next evening). This applies to print ads in magazines and billboards as well. Print garners attention and generates response.
This isn't an attack on digital media, but merely an overdue apologia or proper defense of the very relevant and very effective methods of advertising that have been unfortunately maligned by 21st century businesses, often to their own detriment.
Print is more trusted, engages people differently than digital, and they retain more information upon exposure. Print (in advertising) is not only not dead; it's a strong contender for the better methods of advertising. I recommend both print and digital advertising, but for most industries, if you have to pick one, go with print.