The Power of Print Campaign
Blog | April 13th, 2010
On March first, leaders of the top magazine publishing companies united to launch “The Power of Print” campaign promoting the vitality of magazines as a media vehicle. The campaign will run for 7 months and nearly 100 magazine titles will run full page ads touting magazine’s advantages over the disadvantages of the internet. Headlines like “We surf the Internet. We swim in Magazines.” will be accompanied by iconic imagery first published in America’s most popular magazines.
Of course all of this is in response to low ad sales and competition from the web. Personally, I think it’s about time the printing industry stood up and became proactive in prolonging the life of their medium. It may even be 5 years too late. After all, what is the real message here? Don’t advertise on the web, advertise in print? We’re more immersive; we have more readership; we have a longer shelf life and pass along audience? The problem here is that most print magazines have online versions as well so are they insulting their own digital brand?
The real challenge for magazines is to get ahead of the digital curve and become relevant again by altering their medium to fit new digital innovations like the iPad. That I’d like to see.