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May 22, 2007
Print is Dead. So were Trade Shows
"Print is dead, print is dead, long live the Internet..." go the naysayers.
"Trade shows are dead, trade shows are dead, long live the Internet," was the party line out of people who should have known better a decade ago.
If print is dead, then why does Rupert Murdoch want to buy the Wall Street Journal? Why have any number of newspaper deals gone down over the last twelve to twenty-four months?
I remember any number of "experts" who were gushing about the wonderful glory about Virtual Trade Shows and, oh, yes, you'd never need to go to a trade show ever again. Instead, you'd do everything on line. Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Fast-forward to the real world today, with CES and NAB still pulling mega-crowds to Vegas (and let's not even get to things like the outdoor equipment events)... with the virtual trade show concept DEAD DEAD DEAD. People don't even try to pretend/fake it anymore.
If virtuality were all that wonderful, Jeff Pulver wouldn't be a frequent flyer on multiple airlines, hmmmm?
So, what about print? Despite having the Internet, I still go to the mailbox every day to see what shows up.
I get better quality junk mail through "snail mail" than I ever have from the Internet. And less volume. Why is that?
Since people have to spend "real money" to send junk mail, they tend to work on the presentation and quality -- and it shows. The barriers for entry -- both in money and legally -- means that the Nigerians who have hundreds of millions of dollars of unclaimed dollars in offshore accounts WON'T BOTHER ME.
And "junk" mail gets at least one good look before it is thrown away; can you say the same with e-mail? SPAM filters at the ISP, mail provider, and locally end up killing a good chunk 'o junk.
So, when something glossy with a bunch of pages AND something I am interested in arrives in my mailbox, I'm more likely to take time to read through it.
Magazines come and go all the time. People bemoan/obsess about the death of a printed InfoWorld, but a lot of computer/IT magazines lost their way over the decades, failing to fine tune both their content and their subscriber base. The death of Boardwatch magazine is a case study in how to take a perfectly good product and running it into the ground.
Print is adjusting, and continues to adjust. If anything, some types of print have exploded. How many "free" newspapers have sprung up over the past three years? The D.C. area has two of them -- one that shows up on my lawn (! Talk about expensive delivery), the other handed out at Metro stops by the Washington Post. I mean with paper and ink and everything.
Posted by dmohney at May 22, 2007 11:04 AM