Can print really get its value across to marketeers when it comes to comms campaigns? Lesley SImpson reports from the second day of Cross Media, where the topic was hotly pursued.
There were plenty of wise words spoken in the Print and Innovation Theatre when I attended on the second day of Cross Media recently, and what’s more, there were plenty of printers in the audience to hear them.
It must be said that when it came to the whys and wherefores of ‘print’s’ positioning within the marketing communications mix, the focus was pretty much wholly on direct mail – wide-format print applications such as posters, POP/POS etc. where not mentioned directly as part of the cross media comms mix – nor where they at the PODi European App Conference which only a few weeks earlier touched on many of the same themes. But that’s not to say there weren’t valuable insights to be gleaned by those in this sector.
Take the second day’s opening panel discussion in the Print and Innovation Theatre: “How can print add value to cross media communications?” Jacky Hobson, director of Up Marketing, said she very rarely runs a campaign where print is not part of it, but that “printers need to improve their armoury” when it comes to talking to agencies etc. “and be better equipped with the facts and effectiveness of print against other media.” She went on: “Talk to your customers about print in the wider context. Drop the print jargon and talk like a marketer. Talk less about the print job and more about campaign ROI. It can seem like a massive
leap for printers but it doesn’t have to be. Integrate other services by partnering/outsouring so you can get involved in the discussion further up the chain and not be the last one contacted as just a supplier of print once everything else is worked out.”
“And have case studies at the ready. Be prepared to show clients how projects you have been involved in have impacted the client’s end results,” added Matthew Parker, director of Print and Procurement. Referencing Marion Stefani of Flyte (a speaker at the European App Conference), he continued: “Buyers won’t go and talk to printers about cross media. Printers need to be proactive and go and explain to them how it works and importantly, how it can improve their end results.” A comment that prompted Hobson to respond: “There’s a disconnect between printers and marketers already. They don’t even know the term ‘cross media’. We need to change how we talk about it.”
“Printers are good at project management so we should build on that and not let print be the baby that gets thrown out with the bathwater,” highlighted BPIF chief executive Kathy Woodward.
And as Martyn Eustace, director of Two Sides UK put it: “We need to better understand what the print ROI is. These figures need to be known across the industry, not just for personal company gain. The information needs to be shared. Anything digital seems very sexy and exciting, so it’s incumbent upon print to have all the tools to go out and stress how and where it can bring added-value to the client.”
Which of course led to the question of how you measure ROI, and though that opens a can of worms, as Hobson pointed out: “Even just brining up the topic can be a great conversation opener.”
By 11am and the end of the first seminar, it was clear that printers are really still at the very start of the cross media discussion, with the rest of the day’s seminar sessions posing as many questions as answers. But in the end it came down to sex.
“It is about how sexy print is,” said Timon Colegrove, who calls himself ‘the standard bearer’ at Hunts Paper and Pixels and presented the talk ’50 shades of print – a tale of digital seduction’.
“Print is the enabler, the key part of the digital experience, but people forget that. Marketers have ideas about digital vs. print based on myth and pure misinformation. They have been seduced by digital. Various polls show people react better to paper-based information but marketers don’t seem to know that! We need to make it better know and make print more sexy to compete.”
Details of the Cross Media seminar programmes can be found at http://www.crossmedialive.com