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Ether Everywhere?

December 26, 2008 Here’s a post-Christmas discussion topic: will there be “physical” media in five years? While it’s shocking enough that five years from now will be 2014 (!), will there be print or other “tangible” media then?

Not really, is the contention of marketing strategist Steve Rubel:

Last time in this space I outlined my conviction that five years from now all media will either be completely digital or well on its way to becoming intangible. Two weeks later, the trend has accelerated.

Many are questioning the future of major newspaper companies who, faced with declining print ad revenues, are putting themselves up for sale or filing for bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the Amazon Kindle is sold out until February and book publishers like Random House are racing to embrace the iPhone as the next big growth market.

Even if you don't share my belief that all media will be digital by 2014, the migration is inevitable and it will have a major impact for advertisers.

I have always been dubious of predicting the wholesale extinction of many medium. Heck, even the vinyl record is coming back into vogue.

Those of us in this business talk constantly about digital media and all these new platforms as if these things were on everyone’s minds. But whenever I use my Toastmasters club as a venue to try out various presentations related to media trends—a club that comprises a pretty good cross-section of average, suburban, middle-class Americans—it’s like I am talking science-fiction. Even as recently as a couple months ago, no one in the club had ever even heard of the Amazon Kindle. I brought in a copy of the Esquire magazine with the blinking e-paper cover and it was like I had presented an artifact beamed back in time from the year 3000.
In the course of my daily wanderings, I have encountered over-60-year-olds who were more Internet-savvy than some 16-year-olds, not all of whom are online. (Last year, I conducted a Toastmasters-sponsored Youth Leadership Program, teaching communication and leadership skills to a dozen or so area high school students. Not everyone was as tech-savvy as we have been led to believe, and one kid told me that his parents forbade him from going online except for schoolwork. It was enlightening to get a first-hand look at media trends and preferences among what I would deem to be fairly average teens. It’s not as homogenous a group as we often think it is.)

Ultimately, while there will definitely be continued media shifts in digital directions in the next five years, the larger trend will be to offer content in whatever medium the consumer wants it. Will that be, for some people, electronic and “intangible”? Sure. Will it also be for other people, printed and physical? Sure. Magazines, newspapers, and books have certainly had their problems, but I think that only creates opportunities for digital printing to produce these materials in a manner that is cost effective at lower print runs than has been typical.

Sure, the print media audience will be smaller than has been the case in the past, but why shouldn’t we think that it represents a hyper-targeted group of consumers? There will always be people who have a preference for print (and I consider myself among them). Why can’t we think of them as a valuable marketing niche?

Posted by Richard Romano on December 26, 2008 | Comments (1)