The new multi-media age heralds the return of snail mail

THE BLOG MOB consensus declaring print media dead needs to look up some recent history as to the forecast demise of trade shows or radio to get a clue. The Internet was supposed to kill both, but it hasn't worked out that way.

If print didn't have value, then why is Rupert Murdoch trying to buy the Wall Street Journal? Why have free newspapers proliferated in larger cities? Once upon a time in the Washington D.C. region, there was the City Paper and some smaller regional newspapers. Two years ago, one company started pumping out a free small tabloid news that shows up on my front lawn Monday through Saturday - go game out how expensive delivery is - triggering the Washington Post ran out its own freebie to hand out at Metro stations and other public points around the area. Bloggers, PDAs, laptop computers, and smart phones haven't managed to displace the lightweight and disposable nature of newspaper print.

Yes yes, maybe one day, we'll all tote around e-Paper rollable displays that will automagically download these “free” offerings, but then we'll still be left with the challenges of wireless delivery and adequate battery life. Wireless delivery will require enough radio spectrum to blast down the publication, but then that opens up the problem of licensed spectrum (i.e. someone will have to pay for access to the airwaves as well as standardized radios a la WiMAX) or unlicensed spectrum, like Wi-Fi (with people fighting over the use of it between for-pay and free services. He who has the most and most powerful radios wins).

Back in the ‘90s, trade shows were supposed to be killed off by the Internet. The Virtual Trade Show was supposed to replace all the muss and fuss over having to travel to cities and frantically run around for 2-5 days trying to meet with people, learn more about the latest and greatest, and cut deals.

Didn't happen.

Landmark shows like CES, CeBIT, and NAB continue to dominate the technology scene and the mobile chaps at CTIA and 3GSM are going through boom times. People want to meet people face-to-face, gauge the quality of the information being presented for themselves, handle the hardware/software in person to make sure it is real, talk to engineers and the folks that built the widgets, and even get some coddling in through fine dinners and hospitality events. Meanwhile, the Internet continues to fuel the growth of all those tradeshows through greater demands for bandwidth, new product offerings, and more “stuff” out there for people to glob.

Similarly, broadcast radio was supposed to be dead, killed off by satellite radio and podcasting. Instead, both U.S.-based satellite radio firms can't pay their bill, so they're asking for a merger to get economies of scale and long-term profitability, despite the challenges of trying to beat two separate radio systems and all those legacy receivers into one system. Meanwhile, Google is going to leverage their web presence to sell radio ads. CEO Eric Schmidt thinks radio is “greatly undermonetized” and will use The Google to sell radio spots as well as AdWords, bypassing the PodPeople and their thousands of fragmented voices.

Print-Poo-Poo-Pundits (P4s) need to wake up to the new era of Multi-Media. Different media types - e-mail, web, blog, print, broadcast, trade show, and yes, even snail mail - are going to be synergistic when used properly and in a complementary fashion. P4s want to be in a simple binary world of off or on, but the real world is complex and multi-variable.

I'd go so far as to say we might see a Renaissance of Snail Mail in the next few years, as spam filters take their toll on unsolicited/unwanted e-mail. In countries around the globe, people still go to their mailboxes every single day to see what has arrived; e-mail hasn't killed that habit. If I send a piece of paper mail, it is more likely to arrive than an e-mail these days and will at least get one glance before going into the waste bin. Sure, it costs much more than the nano-cents of e-mail, but it's likely to get more attention from the receiving party than a push of a delete key. µ