McCue & Associates’ President Mike McCue shares his take on a recently published Harvard Business Review article on how hashtag#advertising has begun to shift back toward traditional approaches, saying it provides “good insight on what we already know”.
With jammed inboxes and all manner of internet ad saturation, digital fatigue is omnipresent today. However as the blitz keeps increasing and open rates are trailing, one can’t help but wonder, when will the bubble burst? According to a recent Harvard Business Review article (see link below), it already has. Don’t misunderstand, digital and social are important components of any comprehensive integrated marketing program, and our firm fully supports them regularly. Yet there are other very effective mediums as well, including tried and true and oftentimes preferred, alternatives.
Many today have ascribed under the false impression that the print medium is dead. On the contrary, it is far from dead. As a marketing firm that closely evaluates response rates, circulation and how media are consumed, we have a responsibility to our clients to recommend the most effective ways to reach through to their market segments. This is why we invariably include print in the mix, particularly in the B2B manufacturing world. Why? One of the primary reasons is by and large, when given the chance to choose only one format to receive virtually any B2B manufacturing industry publication, 70 to 80 percent of the time the reader’s format choice is still print over digital, as audits will attest.
The following Harvard Business Review article provides good insight on what we already know; print is to be respected. Even as today’s onslaught of methods and channels to communicate (translate—more arrows for more quivers) continues to expand, I leave you with the following truism: Just as radio never displaced newspapers, TV never displaced radio, and the internet and social media have never displaced any of the former, digital will never displace print.
Enjoy the article, it’s a good read. –Mike McCue, President, McCue & Associates
https://hbr.org/2022/04/why-marketers-are-returning-to-traditional-advertising