Our Strategy Director unpacks post pandemic content consumption to see whether online or offline channels reign supreme
When I started my career over a decade ago in the digital boom, there was no denying the term ‘right place, right time’. My first job and CBD office had quite literally replaced an old national newspaper that sold classifieds and print ads before the terms Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace existed. Online was in, and print was out (and for good, long live The Trading Post).
Fast forward to 2024 with a suite of new social platforms, a pay-to-play media landscape propelled by paywalls and online subscriptions and a pandemic that accelerated the internet and content consumption five years ahead.
According to the internet (which has never lied to me before), we can see upwards of 10,000 ads daily and in most instances, we don’t even recognise it as an ad. Our eyes have attuned so much to this online bombardment that we now desperately crave time away from our devices. This pressure has created a new emphasis on the outlets that lived long before the internet in the noughties, adding significance and value to the media that many thought were dying, like print.
So can online and offline coexist? They absolutely can and they absolutely should.
The inception of online media was born out of a desire to connect the world, creating communities, democratising voices and flipping the media to a two way conversation where users could comment, engage, like and subscribe.
As social media algorithms grow increasingly intelligent and online media publishers start creating their own news outlets, users are becoming increasingly savvy in the way they choose to opt in to news.
Call it fake news, call it Brat culture, call it very cutesy – very demure, the subculture of the internet has become so saturated and trend based that it’s becoming increasingly hard to cut through. It’s competitive, it’s expensive, and going viral is a Tattslotto ticket only afforded to the lucky few.
On the flip side, while the volume of print media slowly eroded away in the background, the very evolution of the online predecessor has ended up back in our hands as an escape from the virtual world.
Now the numbers (and brands) are starting to tell the story. While an exodus from Facebook unravels, the print industry has revived Cosmopolitan, Elle and Nylon magazines in the last year alone.
There might be a few less pages but there are more opportunities for product placement that live beyond the magazine, including supporting online journals, socials and podcasts.
While the nature of a social media post is restricted to a word count, a print article offers interviews, quotes and a physical takeaway that can be shared with family, friends and live on unlike the excessive swiping of screen time we’ve had with online content for the last decade.
Print’s exclusivity, rarity and newfound renaissance gives brands the opportunity to stand out and while online continues to evolve – the relationship of these competitor medias should be looked at and harnessed together to fully maximise the content potential.
So the next time you’re thinking about your online strategy, be it social or digital – take a minute and think of the end user. Will my online message reach my audience directly, or is it going to get lost along the way? If it’s the latter, print might be the added compass that ensures your message gets from A to B safely.
