DIGITAL is the first port of call in the Age of Google but what if your message just isn’t getting through on the screen? One way to cut through the fog of AI-generated mass messaging online is to consider a print title – with a few important considerations.

Time was print ruled supreme. Beginning in the UK and flourishing Stateside, print offered a simple proposition for publishers: make a great and useful (preferably both) magazine, then sell it to readers on newsstands either on the street or in dedicated convenient shops, picking up a per-copy revenue while you were at it.

As long as you managed to sell more copies of the magazine than it cost to produce, print and distribute, then you were in the gravy. Throw in a few high-paying advertisers and times were good.

Transcribe this model to Asia and the equation became even easier: make the paper free to readers, then charge advertisers for the privilege of reaching a high number of consumers. Formulate your editorial content around a particular group or interests, then go vertical with distribution, and the demographics started to look very nice indeed.

And then it all came to a grinding stop. Google arrived, content exploded online, and suddenly no-one had time to be carrying around a magazine when all you needed was right there on your phone. More to the point, reader demographics became even more targeted, and bigger in numbers. So print died.

Except it didn’t, not entirely. What, for instance, became of the thrill of seeing yourself in a magazine, or even better, on the cover? Where was the kudos in having your (or your product’s) photo about the size of a postage stamp on someone’s iPhone, compared to the glory of a double page spread in a glossy magazine with carefully chosen paper.

And what of the experience of actually flipping through a beautifully created title while you languished by the pool, largely helped by the fact that it’s impossible to read your phone in the sunlight? Throw in the fatigue of doom scrolling, the robotic wallpaper nonsense now generated by AI, the revolution in privacy protection and data scraping, and you can see why people still want to be associated with good old fashioned print. On the coffee table, in the office, at the event.

There are a few provisos to this. While print may have reached the same nostalgic and tactile position as vinyl records, it doesn’t mean you can just throw out any old rubbish and expect it to follow any of the old rules. The straight distribution model now only works for the very best magazine brands (think Vanity Fair), advertisers are still not sure that the cost of print advertising is really worth it when set against, let’s say, YouTube, but still … people love it, they want and respect it.

Print magazines are today being used in a very different way than before. Today they form part of a marketer’s armory, one that may not deliver in terms of mass reach but one which definitely works in terms of quality branding. Events marked by a high level publication, produced on a limited digital print run, and using content that is targeted specifically to the people who you want it to influence, still make consumers sit up and take note. If they have gone to this much trouble to produce this kind of quality, why would I not think they carry this philosophy through to all their products?

Mr Content specializes in print.

As editorial director of The Yak Magazine in Bali, Mr Content Asia formed the central creative team behind the island’s most respected lifestyle magazine during its 17-year tenure at the top of Bali’s publishing sector.

Responsible for all editorial content on a quarterly schedule, the MCA team managed the editorial direction of the publication, building writing, fashion and design teams, and capturing the beauty of the island through world-class photography.

Today we bring this expertise to a number of new publications, including WILD for the Unstoppable Branding Agency, and to other organisations under our Contract Publishing Division, building magazine titles from the ground up.

Beginning in the early 1990s, our impressive list of publications has included Expressions, for American Express, The Regent for Regent Hotels International, and Expat Magazine, for The Expat Group in Singapore, among others.

So yes, print is dead. Long live print.