• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 1, 2007

Are visual communication forms like video' graphics and multimedia supplanting text-based media?
Let us spell it out for you: N-o-w-a-y!

In the caste system of the communications industry, few would argue that print media isn't falling into some disfavor. More than five and a half centuries after German engraver Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press, some people believe the long reign of print media may be at an end, as digital technologies enable publishers and consumers to create, access and disseminate content much faster, more efficiently and on-demand than print-based media ever could.

Whether printed media actually fades, or is simply evolving into a new form of digital publishing, may be the subject of debate. What is not, is what is happening to the core component of printed content: type. Type, text, or the printed word is not fading as a media content format. In the age of digital media, it actually appears to be growing - for now.

But there are media designers and futurists who believe that we are becoming a more "visual" society and a less literary one, and that over time, text will take a back seat to video, audio and multimedia content. Others contend that humans simply are not programmed to process certain forms of media content as effectively in other formats, and that our reliance on text will actually grow, not subside as digital media proliferate.

It's an interesting scenario - given some rethinking about the nature of media content, and the role various content formats play in the economic food chain of the media industry.

"I clearly believe we are moving to a format-based paradigm, and we are seeing it both online and offline, from what I call 'text purveyors,'" says Steven Fredericks, president and CEO of TNS Media Intelligence, and author of StrADegy, a book about how digital media is impacting the future of advertising that makes a strong case for shifting away from media platforms and toward media content formats.

Fredericks says he's been spending a lot of time with conventional newspaper and magazine publishers, and says "they've finally woken up" to the fact that they're now publishing across platforms, and that the big challenge for them today is "how to think more broadly in terms of the notion of text.

"What they really are about is text. Whether that text is in a digital format or an analog format should not be an issue for them. The issue should be how they monetize it and what the role of advertising should be within that."

Instead of growing less focused on text-based content in the age of digital photography, cheap video cameras and editing systems, and multimedia graphics, Fredericks argues that we are actually growing more dependent on text as a form of communication - both professionally and personally.

He cites the rise of social media as a prime example. While amateur video networks like YouTube command much of the industry's fascination with social media, Fredericks notes that the predominant content format populating blogs, discussion boards, social network pages, etc., continues to be text-based communication.

It's All About Text

In fact, one of the largest forms of communication on the Internet continues to be primarily text-based: e-mail. "Communications," including e-mail, currently accounts for 33 percent of the time the average user spends online, according to a recent study by the Online Publishers Association. Others think the share of online time spent communicating via text - including e-mail, instant messaging, chatting, discussion boards, social media pages, blogs and the like - is actually much higher, though the OPA study asserts the trend is toward consuming content, which currently accounts for 47 percent of the time spent online. However, while video and audio comprises much of that content, so does text.

Another form of digital content that appears to be dominated by text - at least for today - is mobile. Text messaging has emerged as the killer app for most wireless services, and continues to be the only significant commercial application for mobile marketing in the United States.

And in a broader context, the fastest growing segment of online advertising is actually all about text: search. "For many of our clients, it is the fastest growing segment of their advertising budget. And that is all text," says David Edelman, executive vice president of strategy and analysis capability leader at Digitas.

Edelman says it's not just keyword search advertising that is fueling a text focus in the media industry, but that text is actually part of the fundamental way humans process communications. For example, he notes that even on multimedia Web pages, it is the written copy that often is the most engaging and persuasive content online. He cites examples of some big retail clients who moved away from a copy focus on their Web sites and, ultimately, reverted back when they discovered that text sells better.

"When they converted to video they actually experienced lower response rates," he says. "Whereas with text, it is much easier to bullet point and clearly define the benefits of a product of a brand, because you're literally spelling it out for people."

That's something that people in the direct marketing field have known all along, says Edelman, citing the emphasis on copy in direct mail pieces, which still are one of the largest forms of commercial media, even with the rise of the Internet and the power of television.

Processing the Patter

Perhaps the greatest example of text's communication power is something Edelman says has impacted most business organizations, especially those on Madison Avenue. "Why do you think that organizationally we've moved away from voicemail as a form of internal communication and toward e-mail? It's because text is a much more efficient way of communicating information."

The growth of written - or more likely, typed - words online also is having an impact on the way big marketers communicate with and research consumers. The rise of viral marketing, buzz marketing and social media monitoring are all largely about spreading or analyzing text, says TNS' Fredericks. That's why TNS MI acquired Cymfony, one of the pioneers in the field of natural language text analysis for the marketing world.

"Everyday, we are processing in excess of 30 million entries on blogs and message boards that are all unstructured, natural language text," says Fredericks, noting it is the job of companies like Cymfony, or rival Nielsen BuzzMetrics, to transform that raw, written data into information that is relevant for marketers to understand how all that word-of-mouth is impacting the bottom line of their brands.

Fredericks says great strides have been made in the science, and companies are beginning to discern not just the volume of the dialogue, but the context of what people are saying when they write and post online. That's not something that can currently be done with video- and audio-based algorithms, he says. In fact, any contextual analysis of video or audio content generally must be transcribed into text before it can be processed utilizing such systems.

Our reliance on text-based marketing will only grow, Fredericks says, citing two key developments. The first is the shift toward behavioral targeting, which will increasingly be used to target content and advertising at consumers based on what they've written or said online. The second phenomenon is much more about human nature. As marketers increase their one-to-one dialogue with consumers, Fredericks says text will continue to be the primary way they communicate.

"As advertising becomes more interactive, there is going to be a back and forth between the consumer and the advertiser in terms of communication, and it's unlikely that consumer is not going to be communicating back in terms of video," Fredericks notes, adding that the big issue for the media industry is not how it uses text to communicate with consumers, but how it profits by doing so.

"The uncertainty right now is how quickly that is going to happen and how the advertising models are going to be promulgated," he cautions. "That's where we need to spend our attention. How is the content going to be paid for and who is the advertiser going to write the check to?"

Synergy of Words and Images

Not everyone agrees we're becoming a more text-driven media content society. Big media companies are experimenting with new forms of "visual journalism" and "visual communication" that either omit or minimize the role of written text in their content. It's a trend that's likely to continue, says Jennifer George-Palilonis, journalism graphics sequence coordinator at Ball State University, and head of the school's visual journalism program. Ball State was one of the first schools in the nation to offer a degree majoring in visual journalism, and George-Palilonis says it was an outgrowth of changes in the technology the newspaper industry used to produce papers. It started with the shift to desktop publishing in the 1980s, and has progressed with the shift to Web publishing in the '90s and the new millennium.

Whatever the root causes, George-Palilonis says it is having a tangible net effect on the way media companies produce their content, which in turn is breeding a generation of media consumers who are more apt to "scan" content than read it.

She says this doesn't necessarily mean the demise of text-based storytelling, but she thinks it will lead to greater blends of text and multimedia which may reduce the reliance on the printed word.

One example, she says, is "charticles," a new abbreviated form of storytelling popularized by big consumer magazines like Real Simple that replace long, copy-intensive stories with charts, tables and pictures that may be worth a thousand or so words of written content.

"If you look at Real Simple, you've got a whole magazine produced via alternative story forms. There are no long stories in Real Simple magazine. That's the whole point."