Reality Check: The One Thing That's Probably Missing From Your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

Forbes

22-05-2025

Omnichannel marketing has become dogma among modern marketers. We collectively take it for granted that to 'reach consumers where they are,' your campaigns need to span a mix of channels to engage potential buyers here, there and everywhere. Because consumers' journeys have become totally unpredictable, and there's no telling how in the heck they'll navigate your funnel.
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But like any article of faith, omnichannel can get a little shaky sometimes — particularly when campaigns underperform or begin petering out, and marketers start to ask: What went wrong? What's missing? What are we not getting?
A new white paper from The Harris Poll (THP) offers some potential answers. For 'The Return of Touch Report: Reimagining Consumer Engagement in 2025,' which Quad is proud to present, THP conducted a demographically representative survey of 2,068 U.S. adults.
Among the white paper's eye-opening data points:
• 79% of all consumers surveyed by The Harris Poll say that online shopping lacks the 'magic' of an in-person find — and 71% say that online shopping experiences blur together.
• 86% of Gen Z and Millennial consumers agree that 'touching and feeling products are essential to my purchase decisions.'
• 71% of all consumers agree that 'print catalogs or magazines feel more authentic than digital campaigns' — and, notably, that percentage is even higher (79%) for Millennials.
• 73% of Gen Z and Millennial consumers say they look forward to receiving catalogs from brands.
• 72% of Gen Z and Millennials say that they 'wish more brands focused on surprising me through [physical] mail.'
• 71% of all consumers agree that 'experiencing a brand in a physical store deepens my connection and loyalty to it.'
When you think about it, there's a narrative throughline that connects all these data points — and it's that consumers want more realness, more reality, in their media mix.
Quite simply, consumers are craving more tangible, tactile media and IRL brand experiences.
Digital campaigns done right can, of course, be incredibly effective, but by their very nature they're ephemeral — fleeting. You can scroll right past them in the blink of an eye.
Physical media and IRL activations, though, are persistent. They engage more of our senses. They transcend the feeling of our endless swiping, scrolling and tapping at glass.
As you probably gathered from some of the data points I shared above, The Harris Poll found that Gen Zs and Millennials are driving the 'Return of Touch' trend. Surprisingly, this phenomenon isn't about boomer nostalgia. Rather, it's digital-native generations saying that they're feeling particularly 'screen-weary' (as THP puts it) and are thus craving IRL experiences and media they can touch and feel.
Of course, no matter how screen-weary you are — or what generation you belong to — you're probably not giving up your smartphone anytime soon.
So, what this is really all about is omnichannel that bridges online and offline campaigns and activations. It's not about replacing digital campaigns with, say, direct mail. Instead, it involves marketers finding the right, data-driven mix of channels that include some touchpoints that are actually touchable.
As a marketing experience (MX) company, Quad works with 2,100 brands, including hundreds of retailers and CPG marketers, so we tend to see where the marketplace is heading in advance. We decided to work with The Harris Poll — one of the most storied, trusted consumer research companies in the world — to explore these trends and to get their POV on what we at Quad were seeing.
To be clear, this is The Harris Poll's research; this is their independently conducted, demographically balanced survey of U.S. consumers. But the findings validated what Quad has been seeing firsthand in the marketplace — everything from the print catalog boom to the relaunch of magazine brands to retailers doubling down on creating immersive, engaging experiences that draw consumers into their brick-and-mortar stores.
The bottom line is that in 2025, omnichannel isn't really omnichannel — and your strategy is probably not reaching its full potential — if it's digital-only.
This is a marketing reality check that's all about, well, reality.
Want to learn more? Download a (free) copy of 'The Return of Touch Report: Reimagining Consumer Engagement in 2025' here.