There has been much debate on the future of “print”. As technology progresses and information is made available quicker and quicker, print will indeed have to change or die. But also, we need to look at how we define “print”.

To us, print can be defined as any presentation of words or content that the user can take the time to personally engage with. So, therefore, print can be almost anywhere. It’s how it’s executed and presented that make the difference as to whether it will be successful in communicating a message. Or being compelling enough that people will take the time to read, or experience it’s content. Much like any endeavor, it’s the consumer experience that make a difference.

There is some amazing technology being developed that will indeed change how we view, and interact with, print. The goal is still the same, to create a user experience that is both rewarding and fulfilling for the consumer and financially feasible for the producer. Magazine and newspaper publishers have been dealing with this for years. Hell, anyone who produces any type of content that they want consumers to notice have been dealing with this for years. The methods of delivery are changing and we’d better be ready to change with it.

The goals are still the same.

1. Take content, information or some type of message and make it compelling enough that people want to interact with it, or “consume” it if you will.
2. Provide such a unique message or experience that when they “consume” it that it provides a value to them to the extent that they are willing to either take some type of action based on this message, or be willing to pay some amount to be able to continue to have that experience.
3. Be able to “own” this particular space, content or experience for the furtherance of your “brand”.

If these goals sound like the goals of almost any good communications or advertising plan, you are correct. It will be the way that we use these new tools that will make or break the success of these efforts.

The next two often overlooked parts of this equation are design and interface. You may have all the right elements and content, but if they are not presented in the right way to create the best user or consumer experience, there’s a good chance that it may fail.

This is not to say that that things need to be “hyper-designy” or overly pretty. A great example of this concept is the SONY Walkman and Apple’s iPod. The iPod was able to take over the world because it made all of its bells, whistles and music available to the average consumer in a seemingly simple way. It wasn’t over designed with graphics or features, nor was it lacking. The SONY Walkman is actually a brilliant piece of technology. It was designed to do all of the things that the iPod was plus even more things that consumers said they “wanted”. So why is the Walkman not even really mentioned in the music device “wars” anymore?

The Walkman was designed by brilliant engineers and functions as a brilliant engineer thinks and interacts. Your average consumer is not a brilliant engineer (myself included) and just wants to simply access our music, or other digital files or games and be able to use them in a very simple way. iPod was able to create a delivery of a product(s) in a very simple, approachable way. Its design is beautiful in it’s simplicity and the user experience and interface is beautifully simple.

In essence, a lot of what people now use their iPods and iPhones (and any other “smart” device) to access can, by the definition above, be defined as “print”. Read it again and see if you agree. Don’t try to define it in literal, tangible terms, but what it’s trying to accomplish.

So let’s re-examine “print”, how we use it, and how it becomes a valuable asset in the future. We still need great writers, designers, photographers, illustrators and content. Now, with the technology we have coming available we will be able to even further tailor the user experience with the interface design and creating a unique experience with our content. It can be beautiful, inspiring, relevant and valuable just as people in yesteryears defined “traditional print”.

This is a great example of how the “print” experience is evolving and some of the opportunities and possibilities that will be emerging any day now, and it’s beautiful.

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

Mag+ (video prototype footage only) from Bonnier on Vimeo.

This post was written by Tim Scott, founder and creative director of THEM!. THEM! is a creative company founded to find new ways to help companies create marketing efforts that get results and create opportunities, through any technology or media possible. Contact THEM! at www.THEMdidit.com or call 541 306 6723 for more information.

9:00 AM Friday November 13, 2009
ANDREW MCAFEE

You’ve probably heard by now that “your brand is no longer yours.” The assertion’s based on simple math. In the era of blogs, discussion boards, Facebook, Twitter, and other Web 2.0 tools, virtually everyone can get online and talk about your company and its offerings. As a result, the amount of information your marketing and PR departments can generate is only a small percentage of the total volume of content on the Internet about your firm.

What’s more, if some of the external voices become as popular, or perish the thought, more popular than your official voice, then they’re going to show up high in organic (as opposed to paid) search results. For example, I just typed “Hummer” into Google. The second result is the Wikipedia entry about the vehicle, and the fourth one is a site full of user-submitted photos that are not likely to please the brand’s owner.

Every large organization I’m aware of is highly sensitive about its brand, and few are happy about losing or even sharing control over it. They react to the reality of Web 2.0 era in many ways, but most of them amount to some form of trying to exert or reestablish control. Some move their mass media campaigns online to counteract the outside conversation. Some try to influence the influential external voices. Many companies monitor the new online conversations, and also participate in them by setting up official Facebook fan pages, Twitter accounts, and so on. More than a few try “sock puppeting” or having someone on the payroll pose as an outsider with nothing but good things to say. This rarely works; Web users are reasonably good at sniffing out inauthentic voices and ignoring or blowing the whistle on them.

A few large, brand-sensitive organizations have taken another approach; they’ve accepted their lack of brand control and have actively encouraged insiders to join the online conversation without making any attempt to censor or even guide them. They’ve said, essentially, “You know us really well. Talk about us on the Web. We want the world to hear what you have to say.”

Does that sound risky to you? Can you envision dozens of ways in which that approach can go horribly wrong? Me, too. And yet, I keep reading stories like the recent one in the New York Times about MIT’s student bloggers, and they make me appreciate the brilliance of this approach.

Five years ago Ben Jones, then the director of communications in MIT’s admissions office, added a single student blog to the office’s web page; there are now eleven of them. Student bloggers are selected after submitting writing samples, and are paid $10 per hour.

I was an undergrad at MIT (just a few years before the blog era) and I assure you that most students there would treat the administration’s suggestions about appropriate self-expression about the same way Roger Federer might treat the local club pro’s tips on improving his forehand. The admissions office understands this, and wisely doesn’t try to edit posts or comments.

And not all content reflects glowingly on the institution. One blogger complained about problems with the resident advising system, while another wrote that she’s felt several times that she didn’t fit in at MIT. She also went on to say, as the Times story reports, that “MIT is the closest you can get to living on the Internet…IT IS SO TRUE. Love. It. So. Much.”

MIT could spend lots of money on their brand and image and never come up with a better advertising tag line than “The closest you can get to living on the Internet.” Indeed, part of what makes it so effective is not just its clarity and cleverness, but the fact that it’s being shouted across the Internet by a current student who is clearly speaking in her own voice. It’s just tremendous marketing; the admissions office couldn’t ask for, or pay for better.

Putting student blogs front and center is a mark of MIT’s confidence: confidence in itself as a healthy organization where the pros outweigh the cons, confidence in the members of its community who represent it to the world, and confidence that the people who come to its website will know how to interpret the information they find there. According to the Times article, potential applicants to the university are “less interested in official messages and statistics than in first-hand narratives and direct interaction with current students.” Does that sound at all like your customers?

Is your organization as confident as MIT? Are you ready and willing to let more internal voices communicate and shape your brand over time? If not, why not? Is it that you don’t trust your people, or your customers? Is it that you don’t want any negativity at all to appear on your digital properties? Or is it that you’re afraid there might be too much negativity?

I don’t think these are unfair questions, or trivial ones. Their answers will reveal not only how your organization sees itself, but also about how it’s responding to a world of reduced control over brands, conversations, and messages. Leading organizations are embracing this trend and, like MIT, they’re giving up tight control even when and where they don’t have to.

Lagging organizations are holding on to the illusion that tight control is still possible.

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The original post is from the Harvard Business Review and can be found here. It was written by Andrew McAfee. Andrew McAfee studies the ways that information technology (IT) affects businesses and business as a whole. His research investigates how IT changes the way companies perform, organize themselves, and compete. He coined the phrase “Enterprise 2.0” in a spring 2006 Sloan Management Review article to describe the use of Web 2.0 tools and approaches by businesses. He also began blogging at that time, both about Enterprise 2.0 and about his other research. He also maintains a Facebook profile and Twitter account.

McAfee is currently a principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business in the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a fellow at the Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

He received his Doctorate from Harvard Business School, and completed two Master of Science and two Bachelor of Science degrees at MIT. McAfee is the author of Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges (2009, Harvard Business Press).

Your business survival or success should not be based on your advertising. Yep, I said it. And that’s the business I’m in. In fact, it’s advertising that gets a lot of businesses into trouble. There is a quote that goes something like this: