The future of print

If I hear another passing comment about how print’s dead and future’s digital, I’ll jump off the nearest cliff. (And you can’t get much further from cliffs than the West Midlands. That’s how serious I am.) Yes, digital’s great and a must in nearly all marketing campaigns, but print has a place as much as ever. What is different is how us print managers have to do things. There’s so much stuff now, we need to be sure our messages are going to get real standout. And there are so many more options available now. Like how do you print? What do you print on? What techniques do you use? Knowing what’s out there is crucial in this game.

Let me talk you through how we’ve used print and what it’s achieved for some of our clients and internal projects recently.

 

**Hair raising ideas**

Out of all of our competitors, how do we make sure we’re the ones who stand out and get remembered? Do we send a courteous email to prospective clients, and follow it up with a nice, well laid-out eDM all about the art of media buying? Not a chance. Recently, we wanted introduce ourselves to the MD of a safari company, so we sent him a safari hat with a brochure printed on fluffy-hair material. Did it get noticed? Well, the day it landed we got meeting for the following week. So yep, you could say it worked. And talk about going the extra mile at Superdream. One of our team spent the weekend drying and curing the ink with a hairdryer.

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**It’s a riddle: how do you lower print costs, without lowering quality or quantity? **

One of our clients wanted to bring down their print spend while printing the same collateral. Lots of our competitors could happily help…by bringing down print quality with the price. They’d get less print management, less time correcting the colours on the press, less attention to proofing, and definitely less nice paper. No more crisp, white silk papers. Instead, think take-away menus that drop through your letterbox as regularly as bills. I love a take-away menu as much as the next person. But they look cheap – printed at cut rates and colour saturated. That’s not us. We’re proud of our output.

By tweaking a few small things (a secret recipe, sorry) we reduced their print spend by almost a third from their existing supplier. And we substantially improved their current print quality with better stock, high-definition printing techniques, colour vibrancy and an enriched look and feel overall.

 

**Box clever print**

We had the opportunity to print something for one of our automotive clients to help them stand out from their competitors. Let’s be honest, most companies in my field would just jump to the standard brochure. But not me and my Superdream team. This is what we come to work for. This is what we thrive on. We push boundaries and stay away from the norm. Did we suggest playing safe and print a nicely designed brochure? No way. We produced something awesome: a sleek, bespoke box, handmade and wrapped in rubber. On it, we embossed the client’s signature tyre thread, making the box feel like a real tyre.

Then, we built a video player into the box showing their reel. Plus, built-in drawers with a high-definition booklet and branded USB. And did the client get noticed? Of course they did. Just weeks after using their new showstopper, they picked up a huge new account. (Naturally we like to think our unique bit of print played at least a small part in opening the door for them.)

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Top tips**

So, here are three tops tips in print buying and executing your print campaigns:

1. Paper bulking. Did you know when ink hits certain brands of paper, it can actually add up to an extra 60gsm in weight? So, you can actually buy lighter weight paper than you think, which can save up to 25% on your costs.
2. Dimensions. By reducing your print job in size by just a few millimetres, you can sometimes end up saving you thousands of pounds. Think about what size paper press you’ll be printing on, then work out how many of your printed items you can work up onto the sheet. Less waste = cost reductions.
3. The dreaded paper cracks! These are so easy to avoid, so don’t be fobbed off by your print rep. Here’s three simple ways to avoid paper cracks.
4. Crease before you fold. Lots of printers rush work these days. They tend to miss this step so they can jump straight onto the next job.
5. Humidity at the printer has an effect on paper cracking. A proven printer who is established and knows what they’re doing should have the correct humidifiers in place to prevent cracking.
6. If all else fails – which it shouldn’t, but for the sake of my three tips let’s say they do – look at the gsm of your paper stocks. Lighter paper is more flexible and less likely to crack.

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Print isn’t static **

Finally, I know what you’re thinking…print is so expensive! And of course, it can be. But only if you buy it wrong. I sometimes hear from our client services team and creatives how clients are managing their own print for specific jobs. It makes me cringe with disappointment!

Unless they have a background in print, understand its constant developments or how to make sure you give the right work to the right printer, I can confidently say the end result won’t be what they’re hoping for.

And 99.9%* of the time, more expensive as well. Having a passionate and enthusiastic team of print managers who add value at the start of jobs, and who live and breathe print is just as valuable as having a marketing team. Hey, if you can’t execute and deliver your campaign properly, why execute it at all?

Feel free to get in touch if you want to see Superdream’s print creds, or if you just fancy a chat about all things print.

Mark Gaffney
Head of Production
01527 573 770