Long Live Magazines!
Another business trip to the west coast! As I fly through the air at 35,000 feet for four hours without online access, how will I possibly survive?
Good old print magazines. They’re still great at informing, exciting, awakening, thrilling, surprising, uniting and engaging. Just like digital, those attributes can also still be found in print.
When I’m online, I’m usually looking for something. It might be information on a specific topic, or another user with similar interests to mine or a company that interests me. I browse, but I’m usually browsing in an area that interests me. I spend hours every day online usually looking for something or interacting but it’s nice to sit back and passively enjoy the unexpected.
With print, I might be reading a special interest magazine but I also might be browsing a daily newspaper or lifestyle magazine. And I’m reminded of how happy I am to find things I didn’t know I was looking for like an article on museums in the Financial Times, an in-depth look into China in The Economist, an article on leadership in BusinessWeek or the latest in men’s fashion from Esquire.
And I’m not alone. As I look around the first class cabin (I luckily got an upgrade), I see three people reading books (not on Kindles), one reading People, one reading Road & Track, one reading the in-flight magazine, two working on spreadsheets on their computer, two people in conversation and two more sleeping.
It’s my favorite part of flying. The chance to toss four or five magazines into my briefcase and then spread a couple of hours being entertained, enlightened and educated on topics I wasn’t really looking for.
I’m lucky to work in an environment every day where I get to use and experience the best of both print and digital publishing worlds. Both have incredible strengths that our clients use to connect and engage their customers and members. The smartest marketers utilize both print and digital in an integrated strategy to use custom content as a highly effective marketing tactic.
I couldn’t agree more … “Real Simple” just wouldn’t be the same online.
[...] over at Imagination, a Chicago-based custom publishing company, recently posted Long Live Magazines to his blog, a rather interesting post debating the pros and cons of both digital and print [...]
My favorite part of flying happens before I even step foot on the plane. It’s when I walk into Hudson News and come face-to-face with the magazine rack!
I am saving a nice stack of magazines for my upcoming flight to Scotland. Some of the magazines are informative and educational and some are just guilty-pleasure kind of magazines. I have been looking forward to getting through them all.
You’re so right…there is just something special about physically flipping through the pages of a magazine or book that you cannot get from scrolling through pages on the web. Let’s hope more readers agree so we can save some of the struggling newspapers and magazines that seem to be folding daily.