Print and Digital Converge...at Retail

There is no research, no statistics, no fact whatsoever to show that digital is displacing print.  This was a key message from the Distripress Congress in Barcelona last month; and it was a message that stimulated conversation from conference beginning to end.

We’ve all been to these business forums at this event or that, and sometimes, let’s face it, they can be real snoozers.  But everyone I spoke to had something to say about the “print is not dead!” message of the sessions; and for those who took from it a sense of optimism, that optimism was certainly sorely needed in a year where sales across the globe were down—again. 

How many conferences have you and I been at where publishers were implored to cut their draw, to bring up efficiencies, for the sake of the survival of the industry?  More than I can count; and on the international level at least publishers have been listening.  “We’re cut to the bone,” distributors from worldwide markets told me over and over.  “We need to keep some distribution in place; some copies need to stay out to generate sale.”

So here we are with copies down, sales down, efficiency down; and if it isn’t digital that’s doing it, it’s still happening.  I asked Jackie Cham, representing the distributor from Greece, what could be done about it.  “We can’t get complacent,” she said.  “We have to continually be innovating.  We need to find new ways to connect with the customer and create sales opportunities.”

In another meeting Al Cook, working with Australia’s wholesalers, suggested new levels of partnering.  “The retailer needs to step in,” he said.  “They’ve been asking for efficiency, we’ve been cutting and cutting.  It’s time for us to say: you need to help out here.  You need to work with us to increase the sales on these reduced allotments.”

Whatever the relationship is between the rise of digital and the fall of print, as they jostle for readers’ discretionary time and income, to me it seems that any innovation on the print front must take digital into account.  Publishers recognize that there is huge opportunity to be realized in the convergence of print and digital.  And nowhere is more suited for that convergence to take place than at the retail level.

Many of the wholesalers with whom I met are still perplexed as to how to facilitate that—and even more, how to profit from it. I’m confident, however, that before next year’s conference many will get it.

After all, this new level of growth and innovation is already starting to unfold at retail locations here and abroad.  The convergence of print and digital has to do with location-based services; it has to do with mobile.  It has to do with using digital to market print and using print to add value to digital.  It has to do with using global positioning technology to link potential customers with a products and sending an offer to their cell phone as they stand browsing a rack; offering a free download of music, tips, or coupons to excite an interest in a publication; showing the power of print or digital publications on screen as they wait in line at checkout.

I spent an evening with Christine Crowley of Trofie, a U.S.-based marketing company, talking about the opportunities that exist for publishers in partnership with retailers to leverage that convergence.  “My big takeaway,” Christine said, “is that this is no longer optional.  We need to use digital technology to engage the customer.  At Trofie we’re no longer selling pocket programs.  We’re not selling space.  We’re working with publishers to bring their goals in to focus.  We need to ask them: what are they trying to achieve—digitally, demographically, in terms of circulation or advertising.  We need to listen to the initiative, and when we know what that initiative is, we can begin to leverage technologies to engage our customers, to turn them into responsive shoppers.”

Print might not be dead, but to some it appears to be on life support.  What irony, then, that digital technologies are providing that support in retail locations around the world.