PAINTSQUARE BLOG

Google the words, print dead and you’ll come up with countless articles, polls, and opinions in general, courtesy of many who are all too eager to shovel that last bit of dirt on the medium that has been the backbone of communication for century upon century.

jjchandler.com/tombstone

It is human nature, when presented with two of anything, to immediately choose one. Chocolate vs. vanilla. Red Sox vs. Yankees. The book vs. the movie. It is human nature when digital moved into print territory, to feel the urge to choose which is better; which works better as an information source, and which works better as an advertising vehicle.

So as a marketer, what do you do? Do you jump on the bandwagon of a “digital only” campaign or do you dig your heels in and insist on print?

Got Lemonade?

Any marketing guru worth his or her salt will tell you to view your problems as opportunities; to turn your lemons into lemonade.

The protective and marine coatings industry in particular, sits comfortably in the middle of the print to digital conversion. The information technology field, for instance, is most likely further along into the acceptance of an all-digital world than are we, yet we are more digitally-evolved at the moment than many other lines of business.

Today companies claim generations of workers on their management teams, with varying degrees of technological savvy.

Your target customer, for instance, may have a president who has depended on specific trade journals for the bulk of his tenure and he’s not about to stop now. The same company may very well have an often younger, management team member who lives and dies by Facebook and is quite comfortable ingesting information in a digital format.

Wouldn’t it be shrewd of you to talk to them both?

Growing Pains

While society suffers the growing pains of its shift from a print world to one that will most likely combine print and digital, (at least for a while until we perfect our individual jet engines and, “Beam me up, Scotty” becomes a command grounded in reality) it is the keen marketer who invests in a campaign that lives on multiple platforms.

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One beautiful aspect of print and digital co-existing, is that they reinforce each other. Information that is garnered in print can be further supported or embellished on in digital, and vice-versa. These media boast a complementary relationship as they each extend the shelf-life and visibility of the other.

Keeping it Fluid

At the moment QR codes serve to immediately connect the reader from a print medium to digital, and once you’re in digital land, you can research your topic, or product, or whatever, simply by clicking.

Add social media mechanisms to the mix and you begin to experience the human element i.e. actual people “liking” your product or message, actual people tweeting and retweeting what you have to say. One pair of eyes grows into hundreds, even thousands, when your audience becomes your messenger.

The name of the game in marketing has always been to hone your message, define your target audience, and hang out where they hang out. Yes, this print vs. digital quandary you may find yourself in could very well turn out to be your best friend.

ABOUT THE THE BLOGGER Pamela Simmons As Director of Marketing at Technology Publishing Company (publisher of PaintSquare, JPCL and Durability + Design), I’m here to share my thoughts about marketing, social media, and how the digital revolution impacts the protective and marine coatings industry and the world in general. SEE ALL CONTENT FROM THIS CONTRIBUTOR