Notes From The Retail Marketplace: The Future of Digital is Print

Publishers need to get off the ledge and get out of the corner they've backed themselves into.

By Linda Ruth
06/13/2012 -03:53 PM

“There isn’t a lot of 'S' in ‘POS’ anymore.”

That was the first quotable phrase I heard when I arrived at the MPA/PBAA Retail Conference, held June 11-13 in Baltimore and attended by pretty much all the movers and shakers interested in retail circulation in the publishing industry.

The second came from a national distributor executive who, hearing someone invoke the divine in a wish for an industry rebound, replied, “It will take more than God to help us now.”

One of my first meetings involved a publisher showing me a magazine presenting new works of fiction. It’s name: The Coffin Factory.

“I came in for a magazine and left with a Cliff Bar," said Andrew Davis of Tipping Point Labs on finding snack displays set up in front of the supermarket checkout displays (see: Things Found in Front of the Magazine Display).

Given the rather inauspicious nature of this start, it came as a bit of a surprise when every business meeting in a very full roster of meetings was full of progressive and actionable ideas for marketing, sales and growth.

Davis himself had plenty of ideas with varying levels of actionability: Why can’t Cliff Bars hang health magazines on that same display? Why can’t we swing this industry back to non-returnable? Why can’t we put the magazines up on the way into the stores instead of the way out? Why can’t we break up the mainline into one foot segments and place them all over the store? Why can’t we market our fish magazines in fish stores, our cooking magazines along with the food, our beer magazines at the beer cooler?

Some of his ideas might appear to be mutually exclusive. For example, break up magazine distribution and micro-target the retail outlets, but also simplify the process, which is way too complicated.

But his message was mainly: Print has power. Print has permanence. It is tangible; it has authority; it has prestige. A website holds a reader’s attention for three minutes; a magazine holds it for ten times that, or more. Every brand wants to be close to print’s readers; every brand wants to leverage the consumer interest that print drives.

So, Davis urged the assembled publishers to get off the ledge, get out of the corner they've backed themselves into. Pay attention to the small successes and look where they point. Draw from the lessons and use the power of digital to leverage print. Get out there and kick some butt.

But, he said, stop doing the same old thing. Try something new, try something fresh and try something radical.

And, he added, if the first thing you try doesn’t work, move on and try something else.

Linda Ruth is Principal of Publisher Single Copy Sales Services. Her book of case studies, "How to Market Your Magazine on the Newsstand," is available at BookDojo.com and at Amazon.