Is Print Advertising a Luxury?
At a recent media briefing with a trade healthcare publication, the editor, who has a reputation for being a stick-in-the-mud about not “contaminating” editorial with promotional messages, surprised (shocked) me with her plea at the conclusion of the meeting. Turning to my client as she stood up to leave, she said, “And I hope to see you advertise in our publication.”
Ad pages are down, and print publications are suffering. It is physically noticeable as many controlled-circulation publications get thinner by the issue. More and more, editors speak of slated articles being postponed to a future issue because the final page count is dependent on the number of advertising pages the publication is able to sell. Meantime, clients are allocating more of their scant marketing communication dollars to public relations, using the classic strategy of getting “free ink” by paying PR people to pitch stories and place articles. So, should we encourage clients to place ads in certain issues just to make sure their articles appear as scheduled? Ugh.
Somewhere along the road, healthcare marketers seem to have forgotten many of the good principles of marketing communications—the value of advertising in developing and establishing a brand, the synergy between different elements within a communication mix and, above all, that a well-thought-out, strategic communication plan is the best way to achieve results in the market, justify your decisions to your management and preempt reactive budget cuts. And indeed, tactical, reactive decisions to place an ad here and there, when budget allows, set a marketing team up for failure, since these one-shot efforts rarely bring results.
In many ways, ad agencies and marketing communication consultants like us have to accept responsibility for not successfully selling clients on the value of advertising. We, too, get caught up in the scramble of budget constraints, incomplete briefs and all those things we blame clients for. And to our dear friends in publishing, I would like to suggest some changes in the way ad pages are sold. Nowadays, many clients place media directly, in part to save the agency commission, some of them without any semblance of an annual plan and often in response to media reps calling about “special issues,” “bonus circulation” and other incentives to react. At the same time, few healthcare agencies offer expert media counsel, and so the myopic view about advertising is propagated.