Contract and lifestyle magazines publisher Title Media has carried out a 2,000-strong survey finding that print is the preferred channel for readers looking for a break from digital overload.
The company people on its databases it has built up in ten years of business along with an invitation on social media. Managing director Sam Harrington-Lowe says: “We had anecdotally noticed a shift in attitude recently, with people talking about how fed up they were of digital content and how lovely print was etc, so I just thought it would be good to see if the research bears that out, and it does.
“Our aim was to get beyond assumptions. Marketers are realising that print isn’t dead – in fact quite the opposite. It’s become a mark of respect and credibility. When a brand invests in print, it signals quality and attention. Yet digital still shines when it comes to immediacy. The results show just how complex and nuanced consumer habits are, and why marketers need to deploy a blend of both.”
The respondents were asked about the credibility of media, the user experience, types of content and reading habits and then the influence that this has on purchasing decisions.
Print was compared to digital magazines, websites and apps, social media, audio (podcasts and radio) and video. Print was named the most trustworthy media by four times as many (59.3%) people as chose social media and websites (13.3% each) and almost ten times as trustworthy as digital magazines (6.7%).
Key to the power of print according to the survey is the emotional connection it creates: two-thirds say they like the ‘feel or smell’ of print, 60% use print to slow down with 26.7% saying it provides a break from coal media and 46.7% find print to be more inspiring than online content.
It is not all good news. The most frequently consumed media at home were social ahead of radio/audio and websites, video and then magazines and newspapers. Nobody chose newsletters or digital magazines for at home relaxing lifestyle content.
Of the lifestyle content, food and drink, arts and culture head health and wellbeing, travel and home and garden. When it comes to reading this type of content print scores better than other media. This changes for discovering where social media is the top scoring channel at 86.7% with print registering at 20%.
This should not be confused with effectiveness. The survey found two-thirds of respondents saying that they had purchased something after seeing it in a magazine, a far higher conversion rate than digital can muster.
This is tied up too in the quality values tied up in print. The pull of print is about beautiful design and photography (60%), content not available elsewhere (53.3%), quality of writing and journalist (40%) and a third like the idea of keeping a magazine for future reference.
