Imagine Saving the New York Times

I really don’t like to sweat all over my iPhone. My iPhone is a thing of beauty and I hate to make it all yucky.

OK you say – so what?  Well – here’s the point.  I was reading the print edition of the New York Times today instead of reading it digitally on my iPhone or iPad as I mostly do.  I was reading print because I was on the bike at the gym. Sweating.  And then I turned the page and ran full bore into a lot of white space – and a love note from Yoko Ono. Of course. Today would have been John Lennon's 72nd birthday. “Imagine all the people living life in peace” Yoko wrote in big bold black letters in the middle of all that white. 
 

And even with our deeply polarized country about to vote for a president and a congress and then fall off the fiscal cliff  – for this morning at least Lennon’s wistful lyrics renew my foolish hopes for humanity.

So why am I telling you all this?  Because if I had been reading the Times digitally – on a smart phone/tablet app – I would have missed that full page message from Yoko Ono.  Or any other full page or half page or quarter page ad or public service message the Times would normally publish.  And it would have been my loss.

Print has not yet discovered how to create successfully such things as full page ads on an app.  Oh occasionally you’ll see an ad page briefly as you swipe through the pages. But only occasionally.  And never something like that “imagine” page.

And I think it’s wrong to blame just print.  Or broadcast.  Or cable.  Their corporate owners and the media advertising and marketing managers responsible for monetizing their product are still – for the most part – living in a siloed media world. Oh yes we have print reporters shouldering cameras. And local TV stations hiring “content” producers instead of reporters or writers. They all Tweet and Facebook and Storify that content in a frenzy of sharing.  It seems many media creators get it.  But somehow the marketing/advertising folks who pay their salaries – don’t.

People (like me) increasingly use ALL media – but at different times and for different purposes. Recently Nielsen reported that more than fifty percent of all consumers in this country have smartphones. iPad and other tablet sales are surging.  We stream movies and other video from our PC’s to our huge flat screen TV’s in the living or family  room.  And during last week’s first presidential debate – pundits discovered a new phenomenon. We were watching the debate on the big screen. But discussing it as it unfolded on Facebook and Twitter. It was the most tweeted-about event in company history with more than ten million Tweets.

The next morning maybe some of us new media mavens even read about it in a newspaper. Or at week’s end – in a magazine you could roll up and take out in the rain without getting your iPhone’s nice glass screen all spotted up.

I am as much in the new media moment as anyone who wasn’t born yesterday can be. But I have completely lost patience with the prognosticators who keep trumpeting the death of any media platform that wasn’t created by a guy in a hoodie.

Wake up advertising and marketing people!  Start putting ad packages together which span ALL media – not just an internet ad or a smartphone ad or a newspaper ad.  Yes you will have to be creative.  Find ways to make those smaller screens pay off without enraging those of us who like our apps and our content without annoying commercials. The expensive, award-winning ad for TV won’t work on a smartphone or tablet.  But something will.  Slice it and dice it and sell it as one integrated, pan-platform package. 

And I guess I’m slitting my own throat here but New York Times (and other newspapers and magazines) – find a way to single-price your pan-platform packages in the same way – so a little here and a little there in aggregate multiple platform ad revenue makes up for the bigger bucks lost in the smaller print runs.

Maybe then there won’t be so much talk about the death of print. 

After all -- if there are no more newspapers  -- what will you read while you’re eating that greasy burger and fries?  And how will you “paper train” your next puppy?  Or pack glasses and dishes for moving? What will you put under the bird cage? Or the litter box? Or on the floor when you’re painting that old chest of drawers? 

I’m writing this on my laptop, watching a TV news channel and using my iPad for research. That full page message from Yoko Ono which started it all – is sitting on the table with today’s print edition of the paper. The AP News app on my iPhone has just sent me an alert.

We need it all. New media, old media and media yet to be invented. You guys in marketing land – figure it out.  But remember.  One pan-platform ad package. Priced for the way we actually consume media today. Which is wherever and whenever and however we want it.