Traditional Media is Alive and Well (Thank You Very Much) 

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Hello and welcome again to our podcast.

This is Stuart Gandalf and today I have another intriguing guest, somebody I’ve known for gosh Charlie it’s been almost 20 years right we’ve been working a job for a long time.

Charlie DeNatale (Healthcare Success)

We’re both aging Stuart.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Not me not me personally everybody else is. So, I met Charlie actually right shortly after the founding of healthcare success and Charlie has been working with us ever since as our media buyer for traditional media and I loved Charlie from the beginning not just personally and the fact that he’s just a really likable guy and a aspiring actor on the side with community theater but Charlie is an absolute expert

when it comes to traditional media. And Charlie brings us a viewpoint which is a perfect blend of branding and direct response.

lot of the work we do for our clients is very direct response driven, but we also do a fair amount of branding.

And so that’s rare to find someone who thinks on both sides of the sort of marketing brain there. And so Charlie, welcome, it’s good to have you back.

Charlie DeNatale (Healthcare Success)

So it should be fun. I’m looking forward to having a nice little relaxing chat with you about the infamous traditional media.

There’s a lot to cover, so we should probably get right into it.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

All right, good. yes, Charlie is a very matter of fact and a very important part of our team. So Charlie, I came over to this idea as I was looking for a podcast guest and thinking through who we should have.

And you and I have done webinars and different podcasts and things in the past, but we haven’t done one in quite a while.

And I think today the market has changed, And are years together. And now there’s people that… and never even seriously thought about traditional media.

I guess it doesn’t even make their radar. so there’s lot of people that can say that traditional media is either dead or just only for super old people.

Charlie DeNatale (Healthcare Success)

But it’s like, what’s going on out there today?

 Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

We’ll go into more detail, but just in the big picture.

Charlie DeNatale (Healthcare Success)

Yeah, you know, Stewart, mean, we could probably do one of these podcasts or webinars every day because that’s how quickly the media is changing out there.

And particularly even if you incorporate AI into the mix now, every time you turn around, there’s something new. as it relates to the traditional media, I’m glad we’re going to have the opportunity to discuss the relevance of traditional media in today’s media landscape because I think some do consider it to be a dead medium and some do consider it to be sort of a passé and outdated.

However, my conviction at this point of the evolution of digital technology is that people need to take a closer look at traditional media.

and not just brush it off because there are components of it in this day and age that have to be more carefully looked at.

So whenever I speak on traditional media, I don’t feel I want to convince a client to do traditional media.

What I want to do is I want to educate them on where traditional media fits in today. And then collaboratively, we could make that decision as to whether or not traditional media is still an important component to their overall marketing campaign.

So when you started off your question, you said some people think it’s dead and also it’s for very old people.

So the broad stroke statement of it being dead is clearly not true. There are examples we’re going to share today that certainly make it not a dead medium.

And then as far as the very old people, that is a bigger picture because generationally, way habits are now from younger people at the age of 15 to older people at the age of 80, 90, they all consume their media a lot differently today.

So when you talk about traditional media being primarily for old people, there’s relevance of truth to that statement. So let’s define older people first.

That is a 45 year old and older group. Now that doesn’t mean a 45 year old is older. But in the media world, that is the group from an age perspective that is still consuming traditional media.

So when we think about using it and we think about its relevance and importance, I don’t think there’s any denying that traditional media is now just a component of marketing.

The digital evolution is real. The AI coming down the road is real. But all of these are put into a bucket of media for campaigns that help clients, particularly in our healthcare business, that traditional media component has to at least be considered in order to make our campaigns more successful.

So on this podcast today, I hope that we can educate and have people take just a little bit of a closer look at traditional media because if you hear it’s dead or if you hear revenues are declining, you got to look beyond that.

Why is that? Where are those revenues declining? Why are those revenues declining? So I’d like to get into a little bit more of that when we get further along here.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

So I would say just a couple of things for context. What is, you know, as you know, and I have worked with lots of major markets for our clients all over the nation.

you know, we pull together and can’t our reports, for example. sample research reports. there’s millions of dollars still being spent in market places like Chicago, Dallas, Houston, all the major media markets, millions and millions and millions of dollars in traditional.

So it’s funny because if you just say, well, yeah, nobody’s doing this anymore. It’s a little naive, right? he’s many millions of dollars being spent, somebody’s watching, right?

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Also, Charlie, course, you know, we just got off the phone, or I have a little conference call with our team this morning, preparing for a meeting with one of our hospital clients.

And, you know, as you know, for our listeners, there’s certainly a lot of seniors at hospitals, right? It’s kind of a thing. And, you know, that discussion absolutely includes traditional media, and how do we reach seniors in those categories, in both a branding standpoint and a service line standpoint.

So, there’s still a role for traditional media, in that particular case, they’re located in a very beautiful location, where they have both sort of semi-urban, certainly rural patient populations, for broad categories, different media strategies for all the different counties they serve. So, traditional media is very much a line while in those cases. So, Charlie, I challenged you, know, as we talked about, this world is changing constantly and data. Let’s talk about some recent data.

Like, let’s run us through some relevant data. think it would be helpful.

Charlie DeNatale

Beyond just the amount of dollars spent. Yeah. So, Stuart, earlier you mentioned you used the word millions of dollars that advertisers are still putting out there.

I’d like to put the letter B in front of that instead of millions, because it’s billions. And I’d like to quote some statistics from 2024, and also give you sort of an idea why there sometimes is a misinterpretation about traditional media.

So, in 2024, just television and radio alone, there was approximately $32 billion spent nationwide in the United States for those two combined mediums.

However, However, in that same research that I read, it also said that was a 9%, there’s going to be a 9%, I’m sorry, let me go back, 32 billion is a projection for 2025.

What the research study showed is that that projection for radio and TV is a 9% decline from 2024. So the first thing people look at is, well, there’s a 9% decline.

That means that those forms of media are deteriorating, but when you look closer, the reason there’s a 9% decline is go back to 2024.

That was a political year, and it was also an Olympic year. There’s a lot of money that’s pumped into TV and radio and politics as well as Olympics.

So a 9% decline versus 2024, they’re factoring in the amount of money from political as well as from the Olympics that came into TV and radio.

So let’s not look at the 9% decline and all of a sudden approach this in a negative way. The truth of the matter is the number you want to look at is the $32 billion projected in 2025.

That is going to be spent on US broadcast TV and cable TV as well as terrestrial radio. So this does not take into account anything that is done on streaming services.

This is solely broadcast TV, cable TV, and terrestrial radio. So when you look at that kind of revenue, you then have to say to yourself, okay, well, who are these geniuses that are spending this kind of money on a medium that a lot of people feel is a dead medium?

Well, if you look at the category of businesses that spend this kind of money, you could then understand to some degree, why traditional media is being used. Because remember, the key to traditional television, that would be what we call linear TV, the key to that is the reach that that gives you.

Television will give you that reach, broadcast TV will, unlike just about any other media form, except maybe for billboards in a local market.

So people still want to use that reach medium to accomplish some of their goals with their campaigns. So when you look at the revenue projected for 2025, just on TV and radio, at $32 billion, the finance industry is high on that list.

The education industry is high on that list of spenders. Automobile industry is high on that list of spenders. A lot of sports programming has money pumped into TV and radio.

However, let’s talk about healthcare and where is healthcare on that list? What I found in my research and to some degree, even in the daily contact that we have with our own clients, the healthcare field, the doctors, the marketing directors, the people in charge of healthcare entities, it’s not that they don’t want to spend on traditional media.

It’s that it’s sort of a foreign component to them. And in a lot of the research you will read, healthcare providers said we’d love to spend more money on traditional media, but we don’t understand how it fits in in this day and age.

And I think that’s one of the things hopefully that I can share not only here on this platform, but that I try and share when I explain why traditional media is important to a lot of the healthcare clients that we deal with on it an everyday basis.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

That makes a lot of sense, Charlie, one of the things that when I’m going back to what I said earlier, that was millions and millions of dollars in individual markets in healthcare spending a woman.

I wasn’t clear enough about that. So we’re talking millions of dollars in healthcare within like a market like Chicago, let alone the larger billions of dollars nationwide across all industries.

So let’s expand a little bit more. How is media being consumed today just in broad terms?

Charlie DeNatale

Such a loaded question, because that’s where you get into these age gaps in the generations. And if you look at this in a more granular way, an 18 to 24 year old is not watching traditional TV.

Let’s be clear about that. A 24 to 35 year old is less likely to be watching traditional TV or even listening to terrestrial radio.

Let’s be perfectly clear about that. We’re not denying it. and we’re trying not to convince people that there is anything other than those kinds of statistics.

So the way most people of all age groups are consuming media, there is one common denominator. They’re all consuming media online.

There’s no question about that. 75-year-olds, 80-year-olds are online reading news on the CNN website, the Fox News website. They’re checking their weather online.

There’s no denying that the digital evolution present online is now being consumed by all age groups. Okay, so given that’s a fact.

If you look at the 45 and older age group and we’ll look at television as the one example, one of the statistics is how many hours a week does an 18 to 34-year-old spend watching television, regular linear TV.

That’s a minimal number, it’s maybe less than an hour a week that those people in that age group are watching linear TV.

Now when you get into the 35 and older, all of a sudden it’s three hours maybe a week that that age group is watching linear TV or listening to the terrestrial radio.

Now go 45 and over. All of a sudden you’re up to six to seven to eight hours a week of consumption of linear TV.

That’s broadcast TV, cable TV or terrestrial radio. So when you look at how people are consuming media and you want to apply that to a media campaign for a client, you clearly have to look what is the target audience that the client is trying to reach because as a media buyer, I’d be fired if I told you as the owner of Healthcare Success that I’m going to be looking at linear TV ads for

or a client that’s trying to reach a younger age group in their 20s or 30s. It would make no sense, but you have to look at all of these generational ages before you can say, I want to target this audience with television or terrestrial radio or billboards.

So the way the media is consumed varies by age group and as that younger age group, and this is important, because we got to look five years down the road, right?

Particularly for my sake, my I’m a media buyer, right? So five years down the road, as the baby boomers and the 70s and 80-year-olds pass away, and the younger age group of 20s and 30s and 40s start to become 50s and 60s, they’re not going to gravitate towards traditional media.

Why? Because they’re growing up differently, right? We grew up watching television, sitting on the couch in our living room.

With our families eating snacks, the younger group now, 18 to 40, let’s say, they’re growing up differently, so their habits are different.

So five years from now, if you and I are talking on this same platform about traditional media and where we are five years from now, the conversation’s going to be a little bit different.

And I think that’s a reality.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

So, fun fact, Charlie, you don’t know this about me, but I wrote a paper in college for extra credit about the eventual demise of newspapers and I worked for a newspaper.

I was, this is when the even pre sort of internet, as we know it today was beginning to happen and there were different things out there like CompuServe and different services that were out there, and it was pretty easy to see declining newspapers then.

So it’s been a long time coming and those habits people grow up with are, you know, unchanging. So fun fact, I have a neighbor who still gets his newspaper thrown at him every day, and you know, my dog bark pretty much every morning, you’re the newspaper guy.

And like, I haven’t, you know, I got used to working, I driving over, subscribed to the newspaper for decades.

It’s just not my habit. And it’s funny, you have to be careful because even with the age groups, people consume media differently. So my wife, for example, you know, still listens to terrestrial because she’s driving a lot more than me.

And so now when I’m in the car, I either listen to nothing or I’m streaming. So it’s like, you really got to be careful when you think about stereotypes, right?

I’m, you know, the traditional media I’m consuming is primarily outdoor because, you know, I’ve got streaming services on both, you know, TV as well as on audio.

But my wife is much more into, you know, more traditional stuff, particularly when it comes to terrestrial radio. He still has her favorite shows, and at the same time she listens to podcasts all the time.

So it’s like there’s gradations here. So let’s drill down a little more though. Like one of the things that I think is associated with healthcare and it’s a fun fact.

I remember once I went out to consult with a client, this is quite a while ago, looked at me and was like, you’re not going to put my face on billboards, are you?

And back then, you know, being on a billboard was like the ultimate of unethical for a doctor. Now of course doctors want to be on billboards and every hospital has billboards all over the place.

So but outdoor reaches, everybody of every age group, so it’s hard to see that one going away and certainly big money there.

So let’s talk about out of home for a little bit.

Charlie DeNatale

Yeah, so you hit it right on the head, Stewart, by the way, just funny stories is because we deal and talk with doctors quite a bit.

Sometimes it’s kind of funny when you talk about billboards now and they’re certainly more receptive to billboards today than they were, let’s say 20 years ago, but sometimes I wonder why they really want to be on billboards.

Is it just to stroke the ego because they see their name or their face up there? Or is it really to help them grow their business?

But billboards clearly is the least impacted of the traditional media forms by the digital evolution. And what we’re seeing with growth over the next three to five years is billboards will have the greatest growth rate of any of the traditional media forms over the next five years.

You want to put that a different way. They’re probably not going away because keep in mind if you think about it from a common sense standpoint, the analogy you brought up about you and your wife, your wife’s in the car a lot. So she’s listening to terrestrial radio or at least that’s her choice. But the other part of it is unless we all stop driving, unless we all stop taking mass transportation and who knows maybe someday that’s going to happen. I don’t know. But unless that happens, billboards are the obvious types of media that you would want to expose a message to because people are just still out there in their cars and it’s got great retention.

So when you look at billboards also, you also don’t have to worry about necessarily the generational issues of, you know, are they consuming this if they’re 18 or 19 or 20 years old.

Well, 18 and 19 and 20-year-olds are driving, right? 35-year-olds are driving. 45-year-olds are driving. 80-year-olds, they may not be supposed to be driving, but they are, and they’re still out there, right?

they’re going to,  So, and believe me, I’m sort of in that age group where I’m starting to see three lines on the road, which isn’t very good. But you still, as long as those age groups are driving, billboards are going to be out there. The other thing that’s important about billboards. They’ve expanded what they can offer as part of their leap, so to speak, into the digital world or that kind of component.

So, for example, if you do 10 billboards in a market, like, let’s say, Chicago, for example, you put up 10 billboards, well, now these billboard companies have a platform that they apply called geo-fencing.

And basically, they do a geo-fence around each billboard so that when the target audience individual, let’s say you’re the target audience Stewart, you’re driving by a billboard.

And then, after you pass that billboard and we captured you, you decide to go onto your cell phone and look at what the weather is going to be the next week.

So, you pull up the weather app, well, we’re going to feed you a digital ad at that point. So, you could see how the evolution of feeding people information on their phones as an example.

has been an expanded form for the traditional static billboards, as well as the digital billboards that you see very frequently throughout.

So, Billboard projected billing for 2025 is higher than television billing and radio billing, which I reported to you before at $32 billion, and not only is it higher, but unlike TV and radio, they’re showing a 4% to 5% growth in revenue in 2025.

So, it’s one of the few traditional mediums that aren’t necessarily going backwards in terms of its ad revenue growth.

If you look at healthcare, particularly because that’s our niche and our category of business, a lot more of our healthcare clients are understanding better how to use billboards and When we make a presentation, billboards are a lot easier for them to comprehend as this is a good form of media, because it makes sense.

It makes too much logical sense, whereas with TV and radio, you still have a little bit of convincing to do and when you make your pitch for why someone should use radio or TV.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Right, I’ll just give a couple quick thoughts to supplement what you just said. one, when we think about out-of-home as opposed to billboards, that includes lots of other options, right?

That can include, you know, even events, internet science, or to conclude, you know, for example, whenever I drive to Los Angeles, there’s a building there, an old industrial building that has this enormous LED lights all the way around the whole building.

It’s really impressive, actually, and they’ve got big advertisers on that. And so they’ve got motion graphics on this enormous industrial building.

In Las Vegas, there’s almost nary a spot that doesn’t have advertising on it anywhere. The cabs, the bathrooms, all over the place.

So out of home is there’s a million different opportunities over there. Another thing about out of home and then also like you said kind of gets into point where as like is this digital or is this traditional but we’ll save that argument aside.

The other thing that I think people forget about is out of home is on a cost per exposure basis very effective oftentimes.

So it may be expensive to buy a billboard but when you have half million cars driving the day on a cost per exposure basis it’s going to be very, very cost effective.

Not typically the best direct response medium but often from awareness and branding standpoint it can be very, very cost effective and we could obviously spend podcasts in each of these media when we just don’t have time but we’ll talk next let’s talk about radio.

What’s happening on radio these days?

Charlie DeNatale

So I have a very outspoken opinion about the world of terrestrial radio these days and it’s probably an opinion that could be a little controversial, but I do see this as a media buyer. I think there’s been a little bit of dysfunction among the conglomerate media corporations and how they have directed their radio stations in terms of the growth of business.

And here’s what I mean by this. About 10, 12 years ago, as the digital evolution really picked up speed, lot of these corporations who own radio stations built digital platforms as an enhancement of what they were going to sell as part of their terrestrial radio sales pitch.

What would ultimately happen, as you might expect, those investments on the digital side and streaming, etcetera, even to the point of podcasting, etcetera, those platforms were quite an expensive investment for these corporations.

And what happened was, they mandated their sales people to sell those digital platforms first, even over their terrestrial radio their bread and butter which got them to where they were so i’d be getting calls all the time as the media buyer and i’m saying wait a minute wait a minute are you with the radio station, or are you some sort of a digital company you know what are you because even the sales reps weren’t equipped at the time to sell that digital platform but they were mandated to do so fast forward to 2025 here’s what you’re seeing in the world of radio corporations lots of layoffs why are you seeing lots of layoffs because the money that was invested on that streaming side didn’t necessarily generate the revenue they were expecting so what they wound up doing is they needed to cut expenses so they started firing talent, etc. And before you know it, some of the well-known personalities who were making a lot of money on radio stations were being let go.

Now, I’m not in the inner works of every corporation in this country as it relates to running radio stations, but I have a little bit of common sense.

And some of the things that they have done to enhance their corporate revenue stream didn’t work out. So what does that do as it relates to you and I as media people and to the clients that we service?

The firings don’t necessarily matter. You’re still going to have on-air talent. It’s a matter of who the on-air talent is and whether or not you want to align yourself.

However, what’s winding up happening now is these corporations are starting to go back to their terrestrial radio bread and butter.

So when you look now at what advertisers are looking at on the radio side, Radio has survived in the last 15 years, satellite radio. Terrestrial radio has survived satellite radio. Terrestrial radio has survived Spotify. Terrestrial radio has survived even podcasts, because podcasts now are almost a partner of terrestrial radio.

It’s an enhanced form of that. So the podcasts are actually more in line with terrestrial radio. Now, the other part of terrestrial radio that’s important to remember when you are an advertiser is there’s no denying that the music formats on terrestrial radio is sort of a declining breed, because they’re getting music disseminated in various other ways.

The news stations, and the sports talk stations, and the controversial talk stations, particularly in the political world. world we live in today are still very, very profitable.

Who’s the audience that listens to those? If you exclude national public radio, it’s still the older age group. So it comes back to that age group again.

And being sure that your advertiser is in a credible environment, the news environment, the sports talk environment, or the talk environment in general.

So you’re still looking at age being a premier importance to whatever you advertise on traditional media radio.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Makes sense, Charlie. we certainly use radio a lot for in a lot of ways and remotes our sports or talk radio or, you know, again, awareness plays.

There’s definitely a place for it. And you’re right. is definitely some confusion there for a while there in particular.

But it is, you know, an amazing vehicle to work with. We’re probably speed up a little bit here, but let’s talk about TV.

TV is, you know, the whole cable TV versus traditional and, you know, and where are we today with TV?

Charlie DeNatale

So what is streaming done for us as it relates to TV? It’s clearly putting the cable business out. Everybody’s cutting boards on traditional cable.

Here’s the other thing that’s happening. Not only is the streaming service disrupted cable TV, and I’ll get to broadcast in a second, but if you had read the news recently, I would say as recent as five or six months ago, what you were seeing is a lot of professional sports leagues moving away from cable TV for their broadcast.

And instead, there’s signing huge contracts with streaming services, whether it be Netflix or YouTube or Apple. So major league baseball is an example, just fired ESPN.

They’re no longer going to broadcast their games on ESPN. That is a lot of revenue that ESPN is going to lose.

So they’re going to take major league baseball is clearly gravitating towards streaming services where people like you and I we’re sports fans.

And we want to watch baseball throughout the year, whether it be our local team or any other. We’re going to pay 20 bucks a month for the subscription.

That’s where they want to go. And the local regional sports companies are all going bankrupt. Because they don’t have any content anymore.

So they’re gone. So that takes care of a lot of the cable revenue that was coming in. So not only you and I as subscribers of cable TV are cutting the cords to venture off into other things like streaming and binge watching on streaming services, but also they’re losing all of the revenue that is coming in through primarily sports leagues.

So cable, which is different than broadcast, television, linear TV. is clearly on the demise. As a media buyer, I’m very shy about buying cable for my clients anymore.

So I probably wouldn’t be recommending it. On the linear side, it’s news and daytime programming from a local market basis that will survive for the next five to seven years.

And I hope that people will quote this from me today because seven years from now, I’d like them to come back and say, that guy Charlie was right.

That linear TV did survive. But why? They didn’t survive because of their prime time programming because they’re not getting the content anymore for that.

The content is going to the streaming services. But what they will survive with is their news on a local basis.

And I’m not, I emphasize that because of the political environment today. It’s not the national CNN or the national Fox News that takes sides politically.

The local market stations, their newscast is pretty much down the middle. So they’re still going to survive and again, it’s an older group.

So we got to remember that as well.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

So it’s really funny, Charlie, we have a vacation rental and we, you know, cut the cord of long time ago here at our primary residence, but we had to bring cable TV back for older guests because they couldn’t figure out the streaming stuff.

And it was funny. Claire I just got through, my wife and I just got back from with my oldest teenage daughter from Joshua Tree where we were a guest at a vacation rental.

all they have is RoKu, they didn’t even have any, like, I just always marvel like, how does grandma know how to do this or grandpa

Like these are like, there’s a lot of, you know, you get your service, click then and you got to like stream it and get your passwords out and all that.

So it’s definitely changing for sure. Let’s just spend a couple minutes on direct mail and before we wrap up here. Direct mail thoughts?

Charlie DeNatale

Yeah, so direct mail is another survivor. I think it’s sort of in the billboard. It’s gonna hang in there because the only thing that affects direct mail to some degree is postage rates And you know if those postage rates continue to increase and all of a sudden it doesn’t become as efficient to buy direct mail Then obviously clients are gonna shy away from it or advertisers But as of today 2025 the direct mail business going into the revenue projections of ’25 is quite healthy and Clearly if you do direct mail right the ROI can be pretty significant So creative is a big important part of direct mail So you always got to remember about that and also there was a research survey that was done that 81% of advertisers who used direct mail in 2024 Have said that they plan on coming back and Increasing their direct mail budget in 2025 most of these advertisers were brand name advertisers.

So keep it that in mind that 81% of that group is going to come back in ’25. So I wouldn’t look at direct mail as going anywhere as part of this traditional media outlook.

And I would look at as a very, very important part of campaigns in general when appropriate and also the creative has got to be applicable as well.

Quick, fast forward to newspapers and magazines.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Well, before do that, just want to make a comment on direct mail. So the classic for direct mail, a couple of things. One is direct mail is intrusive, right? You can’t turn it off. It comes to your house. You have to deal with it. You can throw it away or not, but you have to deal with it. So back in the day, shoppers were fantastic, things like Valpack and Avon, those things. And they can still be part of a mix. That’s not really what we’re talking about today.

Direct mail from a B2B standpoint can be powerful, although it’s tough to find people like, if you want to reach me at my office, good luck.

know, it’s like, you  can’t. So, but the classic application on direct mail is health care is Medicare Advantage. So Medicare Advantage is still an open enrollment is, you know, finally we’re convincing people to do other channels, but really traditionally has been all about the insurance guys events and then traditional direct mail and TV are the big, and they are still big big dollars being spent there.

So Medicare Advantage is a big user of both direct mail and TV, and we see that a lot, but mail definitely has still opportunities as well.

Does everybody read newspapers or magazines anymore, Charlie?

Charlie DeNatale

So I said it. You said it earlier. I mean, clearly, the traditional media form most impacted by the whole online evolution is clearly daily newspapers.

They started going out of business years ago. You hardly ever see anybody actually holding the the print paper in their hands, although occasionally when at the airport, I see three or four older people sitting there at the gate, and they do have a real newspaper in their hand.

those are you and far between. The daily newspapers are going by the wayside very quickly, if not already. One of the things I do think will survive is something sort of you referenced earlier is those newspapers that are thrown on your driveway because, again, and I’m going to reinforce what I have said quite a bit in this hour that we’ve been spending together.

Age is very important here. It’s very important to those people older who are reading some of those newspapers that are thrown on the driveway.

They still read those. And if you are a local retailer or a local healthcare facility in a local market reaching a 50 to 55 year old, those newspapers can be advantageous and they’re very inexpensive.

Why are they advantageous? Because the people who read those are primarily interested in what’s going on in their immediate community.

And there’s nothing more important to that age group than health. So they’re going to watch and look at those ads and they’re going to trust those people that are advertising in those newspapers because those newspapers are still credible. Those are weekly newspapers. They’re not daily. Everything else in the magazine world and in the daily newspapers, long gone.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

I’m just on mute. Interestingly enough on that, what you’re referring to there is what we call the shoppers, which are oftentimes free, although my neighbor that’s getting the guy driving up is paying for a subscriptions. He’s one of the last diehards there.

Interestingly enough, there’s still niches. Like for example, I mentioned our vacation rental. Even though we don’t live in Palm Springs, we feel an affinity for that.

So I’ve subscribed actually to the electronic edition of their newsletter, or newspaper. It never occurred to me get the hard version. But I do feel like a local connection with that. So it’s funny, I laugh. I don’t do it in Orange County where I live every day, but I do it there.

Charlie DeNatale

Stewart, you’re too sophisticated of a market or to go back to the newspaper.

going to look at the online stuff. So you’re from the exception of the rule.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

That’s true. So The it is fun to see all this stuff evolved and it’s you know the magazines for example were such a big deal and those are gone I use Apple news for my news almost everything.

I have a paid subscription for that and for well the premium sort of Apple everything for subscription which is awesome by the way but the you know I watch my own behaviors and watch everybody else’s but again there’s still so much opportunity.

One question I didn’t you know talk about you know as we prepped for this but I think it was worth a you know sort of mini commercial before we get to the last piece is like what’s the advantage of using a media buyer and you know and especially in healthcare why should they reach out to us and talk to you, Charlie?

Charlie DeNatale

Well I hope some of the things that I brought up today on this podcast is going to be a good enough reason because seriously I mean you know if you’re a media buyer and you’re it’s just like any other business to it is a media buyer.

Especially have been around as long as I have you look at every nook and cranny into every bit of research that you go through And you want to make sure that you’re reading the whole story and lots of times if you’re a client wanting to use your own media But I can almost guarantee you they’re not looking at all of this stuff.

not going beyond just what they read in one sentence So a media buyer is advantageous more so today than it probably was years ago I mean, I only had traditional media 25-30 years ago to worry about now.

You’ve got to figure well How does this fit into the overall Marketing campaign that includes a digital component? So, media buyers I think are far more advantageous to have today as is as aren’t agencies who are full service And that’s a key because full service is important because nowadays it’s more about the holistic Marketing approach that combines traditional that combines SEO that combines PPC, etc. So it’s important to have that agency’s expertise.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Yeah, I would say that And I talk about this a lot lately, you know, today the landscape broadly is there’s marketing agencies that are really branding agencies.

That’s what they do. They say to do other stuff. They’re not really, especially when they’re typically owned by older founders oftentimes to be really the more creative people that subcontract out the digital stuff. Or you have digital agencies that aren’t really good at creative or branding. They again, they say they don’t really do it. And almost nobody even thinks about traditional media. So it’s like with our agency in particular, you know, as long as I’m, you know, of in charge of the direction, I’m always going to have that integrated.

And that’s a big thing of our approach is looking at the branding side, the direct response side, the traditional, the digital.

And certainly we do a whole lot more digital. But, you know, Charlie almost always has a seat at the table, at least in the planning discussion.

So even when we’re doing only digital, traditional, many cases still has a place. Any final thoughts, Charlie, as we wrap up here?

Charlie DeNatale

Yep. Very quickly, you’re going to hear the term quite a bit going forward, multi-channel campaigns. Keep that in mind, because what that really means is you’re combining all these resources of media to make your campaign successful.

And part of that is traditional media is now part of a multi-channel campaign. It’s not the sole media form any longer, it’s part of multi-channel marketing.

Secondly, billboards and radio are going to survive pretty well and sustain their revenue and sustain their place in the advertising industry for a while.

So those two media sources, by the way, which go hand-in-hand in compatibility, you’re outdoors, you’re going be listening to radio in the car, you’re seeing your billboard, it all registers.

So billboards and radio for sure are going to be prominent still for the next three to five years. TV is a wait and see.

I would encourage everybody out there who’s listening to this to just kind of monitor the way TV is evolving, because it’s going to change every single day the more these sports leagues change their approach, the more streaming services.

Find out whether or not they’re going to be profitable in the next 10 years or not. All of this is going to change the TV landscape. So that’s sort of a wait and see. Media buyers that are around the country who buy traditional media, and by the way, they are few and far between these days.

They are going to be able to provide all advertisers with a significant explanation as to how and why traditional media can be used.

Not going to force it down their throat, not going to convince them. We’re just going to educate them to be sure they understand before they spend their hard earned dollars.

That’s the way I can summarize this up.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Yeah, I just think that’s the key is that it is multimedia. certainly, have clients that just want to do, for example, paid search or SEO.

But when we’re the more sophisticated, more business-oriented ones often are looking at sort of a surround sound approach, like how do we reach people everywhere they live and turn?

How do we you know, do this stuff strategically, not just by a bunch of tactics. So, Charlie, it’s a pleasure working with you always.

Today was fun. You know, we get to do this in, I know, every year or two, you know, we’re working together in a meeting in just a couple hours presenting to our hospital client.

Oh, anyway, Charlie, thank you very much.

Charlie DeNatale

Of course, thank you everyone.

Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success)

Thank you for listening, everybody. Hopefully, this was helpful for you. Take care.