Speaker makes case for newspapers’ vibrant future

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/09/2010 (5710 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

According to Suzanne Raitt, the reports of the death of newspapers is greatly exaggerated.

Next week, the vice-president of innovation and marketing for the Canadian Newspaper Association will be giving a sermon in Winnipeg on the righteousness of newspaper advertising.

It’s something she does about 100 times a year across the country, and those of us in the business are glad to hear that in the midst of one of the toughest markets in decades, the industry is prepared to get up on its tip toes and shout about its virtues.

The medium is struggling. It’s long since ceased being the sexy medium of the day. But it’s not dead yet.

“The perception that there is a mass exodus from newspapers is just not the case,” Raitt said. Circulation may be declining steadily, but there are still more people buying the newspaper every day in any one city than are visiting any particular website.

“When it comes to broadcasting a mass media message, newspapers are still delivering results,” said Margot Brown, vice-president media services at McKim Cringan George in Winnipeg.

But Brown said digital allows advertisers to target their message to a specifically defined audience, so that it’s almost as if the message is personally delivered to the target.

Raitt said she believes that regardless of the attractiveness of digital advertising and the instant access that social networking can give you, there is, and will continue to be, a place for print advertising.

“There are surveys that measure how engaged consumers are in the media they consume and newspapers come out on top,” Raitt said.

She can also tell you that people spend more time with newspapers, they are more comfortable looking at ads in newspapers than in any other media and readership has stabilized over the last five years.

Like any true believer, Raitt may choose to disregard some of the more challenging bits — like the fact advertisers believe they do not need newspapers to reach the youth demographic — but she makes a compelling case for a vibrant future for newspapers.

“There has been plenty of bad news out there, but newspapers remain the largest ad medium in Canada,” she said.

She blames much of the misperception on the bad news blaring from the United States, where advertising revenues declined by 30 per cent last year compared to 11 per cent in Canada.

“Sure there were declines, but we just went down with the market,” she said, but outdoor, radio and magazines all took a bigger hit.

She agrees with just about everybody else in the business that for newspapers to continue being commercially viable and a relevant media voice, they need to have a presence online.

Brown said buying advertising in both the print and online version of the newspaper is usually preferred.

But Jason Abbott of Cocoon Branding, the Manitoba president of the Canadian Marketing Association, is brutally frank when it comes to the allure of online for advertisers.

“There is more and more pressure from advertisers to measure the effectiveness of the ad,” he said. “Investing in online gives you a direct correlation in real time when every click on the online ad can be measured.”

So the Internet is not going away, but Raitt said there is nothing to say that people won’t continue to get their news — and advertisements — from multiple media sources.

She said much of the hand-wringing that is going on over the fate of the newspaper may have something to do with the fact that for a long time, newspapers enjoyed great profits with no end in sight.

Whereas every widget manufacturer throughout the history of commerce has faced ups and downs in the market, modern newspapers do not have much experience with that phenomenon.

And while Raitt may attempt to convert some of the heathens of the digital era, she also has a message for the leaders of the newspaper flock to whom the words “innovation” and “marketing” have never really meant much, at least historically.

“We have to be more creative and innovative,” she said. “I’m talking about innovative shapes and placement of ads. The newspapers have to inspire advertisers, show them something interesting. Create mobile applications, use new technologies.”

Brown said she has been in the media buying business long enough to have been through other transitions, but never at the pace it’s currently at.

“It’s exciting to see how it will turn out,” she said. “But the fact is it’s probably not going to turn out… but just keep on turning.”

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca