It's sink-or-swim in this economy, but traditional media is staying afloat

Media guru Marc Andreessen has some outrageous advice for print publications to boost their readership: commit suicide.

Playing off the tired sinking ship metaphor, he tells TechCrunch.com that newspapers and magazines need to “burn the boats” and that stronger, more powerful Web publications will rise from the ashes.

At a time when traditional media brands remain tremendously influential, we think it is ludicrous to suggest they should disappear.

Publishers of major titles such as Rolling Stone, People and Vogue have just banded together to collectively stake out their territory in the advertising world.

At Pongr, we see ourselves as a bridge between traditional media and new digital media. Both mediums can greatly benefit through cross-promotion in each other’s worlds.

Personally, I frequently learn about funny new Websites, viral videos and interesting blogs by seeing their URLs mentioned in magazines or newspapers. And as the trade ad above argues, 300 million paid print subscriptions is hardly anything to sneeze at.

Of course, digital media does allow print publications to expand their brands beyond the static page.

Pongr facilitates the union between traditional media and new media. No matter what the form of visual ad — including billboards, magazines, subway posters, TV screens and even storefronts — a quick click with a cell phone camera can deliver consumers special deals on the brands they love the most.

We recently partnered with GQ magazine to make one of its Levi’s jeans ads interactive.

At the back of the magazine, GQ readers were invited to turn to the page of the Levi’s ad, snap it with their camera phone and send it in for a special 25 percent discount code redeemable at Levis.com.

GQ marketing executive Scott Carlis says he continues to seek “more immersive experiences” for his advertising partners.

“Pongr provides a service that is enormously valuable for our clients because of the ubiquity of the mobile channel and the increasing demands for more innovative and experiential integrated marketing solutions,” he says.

This month, we’re also pleased to announce a bold partnership with W magazine. Every single ad in the latest issue will have an incentive to Pongr, as it will be tied in with a $1,000 shopping spree contest. We’re anticipating volume that has never been seen before in the magazine space!

Find out about our special image recognition technology and why consumers will welcome mobile marketing offers about brands they are already passionate about.

But back to the sink-or-swim argument about the print media, it looks like they’re answering their critics with the extremely buoyant Michael Phelps:

Traditional media may be aging, but it still is in great shape, thank you very much.

Print advertising should be a two-way street when it comes to communicating ideas and emotions with consumers. Unfortunately, the critical feedback loop of communication is almost always lost because there’s been no easy way to quickly and efficiently close the loop on print advertising.  Communication is, by definition, a two-way street.  Savvy media buyers are embracing the more interactive tools of viral and social marketing on the Internet so they can stretch their marketing dollars and get more bang for their buck.  Print media is still an excellent marketing channel when harnessed correctly, but why not take the effort to make it interactive with mobile users and link print advertising to the rest of our digital lives?

Follow Pongr on Twitter @PongrMedia

The trick is, print media needs to be viewed as a physical link to the digital, mobile world. Physical media is obviously important and not going away, but just as people can quickly and gracefully float back and forth between their physical and digital lives, we all are coming to expect the same from the advertisements we find appealing; subconsciously at first, but quite consciously when the advertisements fail to acknowledge our version of the “real” world that is mobile, digital and bricks & mortar all at once.  Physical and digital are really one and the same for today’s youth.  For example, walking down the street while surfing the mobile web or checking email is about as commonplace as seeing billboards, posters and signs.  Sitting on a bench while reading a magazine, texting with friends and updating multiple social networks is equally common – and we all of these things are often happening simultaneously or within two minute bursts of one another.  Thus, time, place, location, social networks and internal thoughts are more relevant than ever to advertisers. Smart publishers will notice that they could have an extremely valuable component to the marketing influence equation.

The point is, why shouldn’t print get interactive?  The rest of our lives are dynamic, mobile, tied to the Web and highly social (even if we mean in a physically isolated, but constantly connected kind of way). Print is a great way to market products and services, but just about every product we buy nowadays has an Internet component that we, as users and consumers, want to explore.

Now, this post is not intended to suggest that all print will be relevant; it won’t. As we can clearly see, many print media businesses are facing mammoth challenges in their models, reader loyalty and advertiser satisfaction. Some “old” media organizations are taking a hard-line against rapid change, but most are struggling to figure out the nuances of getting things done right and fast enough to make a difference. Ultimately, we believe that the transition will occur in phases and stages that ought to be carefully thought out, although quickly implemented. For starters, there are some easy ways to knit together existing print campaigns with opt-in calls to action, simple tie-ins to the Web and no changes to the business process around the print publishing side of ads.  By approaching the need to get interactive from a practical, yet aggressive standpoint, print businesses could not only stave off dwindling ad revenues, but actually carve out some valuable territory in the future of interactive mobile commerce. Further, by leveraging existing distribution, readership, direct sales forces and a longstanding tradition of producing relevant content to complement the advertisers that support any given publication, print publishers and marketers could actually stand out as leaders and significant connectors for both the readers and advertisers they serve.

For businesses seeking to make meaningful connections with consumers, we posit that it really doesn’t matter whether the world economy is in a long-term contractionary or expansionary state. What does this have to do with mobile marketing? Well, some things never change – like how you influence consumer decisions and how you promote your business. You go to where the people are, and you provide something of real value. Mobile phones are always on, always in our pocket or handbag, and highly personal. Brands that are smart about how they use the mobile marketing channel will see tremendous rewards to the bottom-line.

For many of today’s leading brands, mobile marketing is becoming one of the most cost-effective ways to reach consumers and influence the purchase decision making process. However, if you’re not picking the partners that understand what a total solution for mobile marketing looks like you risk wasting valuable marketing dollars, or worse, alienating your customer. The world of B2C is definitely at the beginning of the curve of mobile marketing, and most brands are still trying to wrap their heads around which mobile tools to use and how to get the most ROI.

As with all relatively new forms of marketing, the early days are often crowded with charlatans and naysayers alike. Take, for example, SMS marketing. There are many “providers” that have hopped on the SMS bandwagon, but how many of them really understand how SMS, MMS, or mobile emailing works, and how to maximize the value for your business? Do most SMS marketing companies have an understanding of location targeting, interactive mobile conversations, or analytics for end-to-end mobile marketing campaigns? What about the time frames associated with short code acquisition, compliance, and carrier connectivity? How about the diverse universe of cell phone handsets and displays? If your mobile messages don’t look good, whether it’s SMS, mobile email, or smart phone apps, you risk making your mobile marketing efforts not reflective of your true brand value. If you’re thinking about implementing a mobile marketing campaign as a call to action for your print, TV, or radio campaign, you’re definitely leaning forward in a way that is likely to make your brand standout.

The consumer economy is facing serious challenges, but for as much scarcity and gloominess as we read about or see on the news, there are a lot of exciting opportunities to reach new audiences in a way that drives business, brand, and balance sheets. Mobile marketing is cool, fun, and valuable. We hope that as you look for ways to make your existing marketing efforts more effective, you consider the ways in which mobile tie-ins will help you achieve greater ROI for your own partners, customers, and brand.

SMS oriented marketing has been producing amazing results for brands that have executed it well and tied SMS calls to action into an integrated marketing campaign.  Although, for many, SMS has been an expensive and complicated pursuit into mobile marketing and the payoff has yet to materialize. For brands that have executed SMS well, the click-through rates have been astounding. We expect those leading-edge adopters to be among the first to try image search enabling their print media.

Like most new media marketing techniques, the results have varied based on creativity, execution and overall integration into a holistic brand management strategy.  Social media marketing has picked up a lot of momentum in 2008 and it looks like it’s going to be a strong piece of integrated interactive media campaigns moving forward. The number of brands on Facebook are growing rapidly, while Twitter is becoming an increasingly popular way for raving brand fans to communicate with one another, and in some cases, the brand itself. Twitter has made social interaction with brands faster and easier than ever.

OK, so you’re probably asking what this has to do with mobile marketing and image search, right? Well, the answer is that mobile marketing is the “big picture” next step in the evolution of integrated marketing campaigns and image search is how we’re going to get there. You see, consumers, brands, advertisers and social media mavens have made it clear that simple, fast, elegant ways of expressing their interests are what ultimately stick in the marketplace. Perhaps the most important part of that is the SIMPLE part.  If it’s easy people will try it.  If it’s hard, forget it. What better way to make linking the physical world of print media to the digital world of the Internet and social media than to leverage pictures…

The science behind image search is definitely not trivial, but Pongr can execute and integrate image search into the existing world of print and online media so that the link via image search is elegant and seamless. So, think of it like this, 90% or more of the consumers buying new mobile devices in the United States will have cameras on their mobile phones by mid 2009. Those users are fully embracing the notion of using their phone to take pictures of their friends, places and stuff.  Picture sharing through mobile has become one of the fastest growing major attractions for Facebook and other social networks.  The message is clear: people like taking pictures from their cell phones.  For marketers looking to tap into the promise of mobile marketing, what better way to actually execute an integrated media campaign than tying together print advertisements with a mobile call to action and links to the digital world!

This may sound a bit pie in the sky right now, but the pace of “what’s possible” on mobile is moving so fast that there is 100% certainly that mobile marketing will start to take shape in aggressive, ubiquitous, practical ways through 2009 and 2010. A few years from now, we will be beyond the questions of “how do I leverage location awareness in mobile marketing campaigns?” and “how can I extend the reach of print media to social networks?” and we will being to wonder what’s next…

As the entire team at Pongr embarks on a journey to help bring practical mobile marketing solutions to brands, agencies and publishers looking for smart partners (that’s us!) that can help provide better service and deeper insight into consumer trends on mobile and social networks, we will be sharing our thoughts and experiences in mobile marketing and image search through this blog.