It’s not about you...it’s about your customer. It’s about print companies harnessing new technologies and services to put a value-for-money route in front of clients to that marketing nirvana — customer data. It’s about print providers becoming more proactive participants in the whole marketing campaign mix and pushing print’s interactive capabilities under the noses of those that might consider it a very limited static medium in a fast-paced digital era.
That was one of the key messages from the Fespa Global Summit in London at the start of 2013, a year when you can expect Big Data, Augmented Reality and Near Field Communication (NFC) to make a real impact on the marketing mix and print’s role within it. And let’s be very clear, that role is potentially huge. Really. But it’s going to take some real creative thinking and strategic vision if it’s to be fully realised.
There’s a Special Report in our March issue on the key ‘learnings’ (as the Americans described them) from the summit, the intention being to spark a debate around issues that are core to the healthy future of print, particularly wide-format inkjet.
In this month’s Talking Point interview you’ll also find one of the speakers from that summit, Tim Greene of research and consultancy services company InfoTrends, discussing how the UK wide-format print sector in particular fits into the bigger global picture.
This paves the way for the Image Reports’ 2013 Widthwise Report, which will analyse data currently being collected from wide-format print companies throughout the British Isles in the sixth consecutive annual Widthwise Survey. You can read our previous Widthwise reports here.
Editor, Lesley Simpson
lesley.simpson@imagereportsmag.co.uk
Tel. 01932 707173