Bye bye traditional media
We’re constantly harping that hospitals and health systems should focus less on traditional media and more on patient experience and non-traditional media for their marketing. It could be our mantra. It’s obvious we still have a lot of work to do. Day after day we continue to see resources poured into the same old media channels, delivering the same old boring messages –– smiling doctors, happy patients, blah blah blah. What happens, though, when those “same old channels” cease to exist?
Earlier this week CNN reported that a number of a newspapers across the country are folding — no pun intended — citing “changing reader habits, a shifting advertising market, an anemic economy, and the newspaper industry’s own early strategic errors.” The New York Times shared a similar message.
It’s no secret that society is finding greater value in obtaining news and information through means more practical than printed media. If you’re like me you’ve let many magazine and newspaper subscriptions expire. Those you have kept have scaled back annual issues, scaled down paper quality or have even increased subscription fees. We’re asked to pay more for a smaller publication printed on paper so thin the next page is as visible as the current. No thanks.
I aggregate news from hundreds of websites into Google Reader. I don’t have to wade through pages of ads — or even annoying online banner ads — to find interesting content. I receive links to relevant content from friends and colleagues via social networking outlets and e-mail. I share them in return. I can access these streams from my computer, my phone or even my television. It’s about efficiency. It’s about utilizing communication channels that are convenient — channels that are already a part of my daily routine. Paper is no longer a part of my daily routine.
Obviously I’m not alone here.
So, is this trend a detriment or a blessing in disguise for hospital marketers? On one hand I lean toward blessing. If these traditional channels don’t exist it’s much easier to say “that’s not an option” to leadership and physicians insisting that a full page ad is the answer to increasing volumes. But on the other hand, I don’t think it’s that simple. Once these venues are gone whatever replaces them will be the new “traditional media.” Much like the newspapers of today those channels will fade away, with marketers desperately clinging to them because it’s all they know. Or more likely because it’s all they’ve been allowed to leverage.
Are you exploring the communication channels your patients, your partners, your employees and your referrers prefer to use? Can you clearly articulate the value of these channels when faced with demands to rely on tradition?
If you’re hell-bent on continuing to leverage ailing communication channels to satiate the demands of your corporate overlords you’ll be happy to know that a bill was introduced in the senate to offer ailing newspapers the option to become non-profit organizations, with a host of tax breaks. Good luck with that.
But, hey, we’ll always have billboards right? Right…
Links
- http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE52N67F20090324?rpc=64
- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/business/media/24paper.html
- http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/19/newspaper.decline.layoff
So many ways to jump in here, but I’ll play devil’s advocate:
1) probably dating myself here, but I love reading content in print. I receive the paper on the weekends, and subscribe to numerous magazines. Love opening my little packages of insight, and I honestly get excited when a new Time or BusinessWeek shows up in the mailbox. Archaic? Maybe, but I’m sure I’m not alone.
2) see blog post on 3-29 about Star Tribune’s experiment in 3-29 Sunday paper, with “print-only” story on hospitals and new tactics for collecting payment from patients. I expect we’ll see more and more of this (the paper explains the experiment in their Op Ed page, which, alas, is also print only). Why?
3) Somehow, some way, this all needs to be paid for. It’s great to get content for free through the Internet, but can we really expect great content to be developed for free? Great reporting, investigative reporting, editing – all of it – costs money. So if it’s not through subscriptions, it will be through advertising, or paying for content online. I know many are fans of user-generated content, but the vast majority of users aren’t qualified, experienced, etc. enough to generate the deep content we need to stay informed. We may not need print versions of media, but we need the great content they deliver, and they need to be paid for delivering it.
4) I’ve had this same discussion with another person, taking your side on newspapers (they’re a dinosaur whose extinction shouldn’t be stopped). And I still believe that, as long as the content they deliver doesn’t disappear.
5) And I still contend that if this all happened backward, and the Internet came first, and then someone said, “hey, I can deliver all the local news to your doorstep for 50¢”, it would seem like a great innovation. The day isn’t far off that electronic books, magazines and newspapers will replace the paper versions with the same reading experience, and that’s a great thing for the planet. But until that day, I’ll take my Time magazine or Stephen King novel to Starbucks, thank you very much.
You are not alone. I too love certain printed publications — Communication Arts, HOW, Guitar World, to name a few. But, for me news just isn’t one of the things I love to receive in print. Based on the constant reports of papers shutting down (or going totally online) I’m definitely not alone.
Like many surviving papers they are testing the waters to see how readers prefer to receive content.
Advertising, advertising, advertising. I’m guessing many media outlets don’t make their money on subscription fees. They make their money on advertising. Online advertising is effective. Plus, not all online content is free. Many sites offer premium, subscription content.
Right. Content is what keeps these businesses afloat. Not necessarily the medium in which that content is delivered. As noted, many papers are simply moving their content from paper to the web — not folding entirely.
I don’t think I can agree with you there. If someone came along saying they could deliver content on paper (if the Web was around first) I’d think to myself, “Hmmm… so they are going to have to take the time to layout these issues, print them and deliver them to me? This content will essentially be outdated by the time I receive it. No thanks.” It would seem very archaic. I have a feeling most people would also view it as irresponsible from an environmental standpoint.
Like you, there are things I still love to read in print — the aforementioned publications as well as novels and trade-related books. I absolutely love sitting down with a thick, fantasy fiction novel (yes I’m a nerd). There’s no advertising in those books (typically), so those don’t really apply to the topic at hand. I haven’t tried a Kindle, though I would love to. So there is a possibility I could abandoned books in the not-to-distant future.