Print Mags Going out of Business - Let's Get on With It!

I had drinks the other night with a buddy who is the CEO of a 4th generation firm that manufactures assembly line products for food industries. His eyes lit up when he talked about how they were e-mailing interactive PDF “specials” to his customer list. The cost was nothing, and he could track hits and links and they even made a sale from this (a sales for him is a big ticket).

He scoffed and said he was never going to buy a print ad again. I asked why and he said because you can’t track it. So we talked for a while about how e-mailing your customer base was not defining his brand or introducing his company to any NEW prospects. By the time we were done he had agreed to buy 8 4-color full pages in the most dominant of the three publications serving his industry. (I have to look up that publisher – they owe me one!)

But my friend mentioned that the other two publications were getting thinner, there was no good editorial in them etc. etc…. My advice to those publications is to get it over with and go out of business. Companies still need to do print advertising for many reasons, but just not as much as they used to. A few strong publications will survive, let’s get on with it.