Traditional and New Media in Class Action Notice: The State of Play

The following is a guest blog post by Shannon Wheatman of Kinsella Media.

As the Internet is increasingly used for communication, entertainment, news and information gathering, class action attorneys frequently ask how the evolving media landscape is affecting our approach to notice: “Surely, the Internet is all you need nowadays?” Well, not quite.

While consumers are integrating new media options into their life, they haven’t abandoned traditional media sources and habits. In fact, as recent news events have demonstrated, consumers get their information from multiple sources, turning their attention to different media types at different times and for varied reasons. For example, when Twitter feeds rumored the death of Osama Bin Laden, consumers turned on their televisions to verify the rumors. The next day, many picked up copies of daily newspapers to get the expanded, in-depth story.

Because there are so many media options, more than one media type is usually required to reach a broad, mass audience. Integrated media programs are more important than ever to reach the widest number of people. Even Google, a dominant Internet brand, uses a traditional media approach to drive more traffic to their search engine by running a newspaper ad campaign featuring “Google-a-day” puzzles. When planning media programs for class action notice, we take the benefits and disadvantages of each media type into consideration, along with the demographics and media habits of class members.

Click here to learn important facts about traditional and new media that influence the design of class action notice programs.

Photo Credit: NS Newsflash