By: John Lavey | Hammock President/COO

I started working in media in the early 1990s. In those days, the content we created was driven to someone’s house in the early morning and tossed on the driveway. Today, the content we create can be consumed by someone on her mobile device as she flies to Europe.

I’ve seen print declared dead since the days I had a full head of hair, but the reality is that print has a great role to play for many marketers, particularly in healthcare. No one is saying that print is a substitute for digital, but for what it does well, digital has not yet found a way to supplant print’s usefulness.

When it comes to magazines, for example, research shows we read more and for longer amounts of time and subscribe to print publications more often than digital ones. Marketers to consumers of health and wellness information have an opportunity to reach decision-makers and have them spend more time with our brand via print than email.

We recently developed a Hammock Redbook to communicate some of the value of print, presenting a case for why healthcare providers should consider it in their quest to engage patients. Here are some of the Redbook’s high points:

  1. Print magazine readers are more health-conscious consumers than TV or online consumers.
  2. Print magazine consumers take action to maintain their health.
  3. Devoted print readers are the most informed and engaged healthcare and pharma customers.

Takeaway | You can’t replace print with digital media. But you also can’t replace digital media with print. Today’s marketers have an opportunity to take advantage of a wide variety of media and content to meet their customers’ unique needs and challenges.

Photo: Getty Images



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