In the 1967 film The Graduate, one of the older characters, Mr. McGuire, tells Dustin Hoffman’s character, Benjamin, that the future is (in one word): “plastics.” In the world of printing, I’d say the word is now “personalization.”
I just read three articles from diverse sources that give me confidence that this is true:
- “Digitally printed shrink labels open possibilities at craft brewer,” from www.packworld.com, Pat Reynolds, 5/1/13
- “HP moves deeper into digital printing with Two Smiles Mother’s Day,” from www.venturebeat.com, Dean Takahashi, 5/1/13
- and “Seattle digital printer buys Atlanta company,” from www.seattletimes.com, Alysa Hullett, 5/1/13
First of all, I think personalization goes far beyond the variable data imaging used in a direct mail package. I think personalization is about being personal, or relevant to an individual, within an increasingly impersonal world.
Custom Labels Promote Craft Beer
“Digitally printed shrink labels open possibilities at craft brewer” tells the story of a small brewery’s efforts to decorate the cans for its beverages. In addition to appreciating the image quality of digital custom printing, this brewery is pleased by its ability to produce short print runs of its cans.
Prior to the advent of digital printing, according to Bonfire Brewing Co, many breweries got caught up in producing only one or two kinds of beer because of the minimum press runs involved for imprinting the cans. To do otherwise would have wasted either money or the extra cans. Now, the ability to produce only a short run of the sleeves (the full-body shrink sleeve labels are first digitally printed, then slipped over the cans, and then shrunk within a steam tunnel to precisely fit the cans) means that breweries can experiment with more beverage offerings.
Moreover, the same breweries can change the creative on any or all of the cans to promote special events for charity or to commemorate a wedding (perhaps the image of the bride and groom digitally printed on the beer can).
People respond to packaging that is individual, not generic. What could make more of an impression than a commemorative, digitally-printed beer can label from a wedding you attended?
Print Holiday Cards and Gift Cards Yourself
“HP moves deeper into digital printing with Two Smiles Mother’s Day” notes that gift cards can be a useful and easy gift to give but that they are somewhat impersonal. Pairing gift cards with personalized greeting cards and printing the combined product on your own printer will make for a gift that is useful and individual.
Hewlett-Packard’s new website, TwoSmiles, allows you to choose a pre-designed greeting card, pair this with a branded gift card with a face value of your choice, then include a message, and print the job to your own printer using HP’s Easy Print software. (This also benefits HP at a time when printer sales and ink sales have been in decline.)
What this tells me is that people want not only a personal experience but also a tangible one. In a time when many people only send virtual greeting cards, HP’s web-to-print site provides an alternative.
Digital Photo Merchandise
What’s more personal than a photo of you or your family? “Seattle digital printer buys Atlanta company” tells the story of RPI, a custom printing supplier that produces photo books and greeting cards from images customers have uploaded to photo sharing websites such as Blurb and Snapfish. (RPI is buying DPI in Atlanta to be able to provide bi-coastal printing services.)
The market for personalized print products doesn’t end with photo books for individuals, though. There’s a growing interest in personalized pet goods, yearbooks, and even home décor, according to the Seattle Times article.
What these items provide is brand recognition and personalization within the realm of printed physical objects. And if the web-to-print sites–as well as brick-and-mortar printers that also produce such promotional products–can involve customers in the design of the items, all the better.
For instance (and in contrast to individual products for individual clients), in 2008 DPI worked with Nestle to provide user-customizable baseball cards over a branded website. Both the customers and the brand benefited from this large-scale promotional initiative.
The Market Is Ripe for Digital
As the Seattle Times article notes from the most recent IBISWorld report, “While print revenue in general fell at an average rate of 6.2 percent per year from 2007 to 2012, the digital printing market continued to climb.” The article goes on to say, “As consumers increasingly make choices based on social media, recommendations from peers and mobile platforms, businesses are forced to turn to more creative-marketing strategies (Rick Bellamy, chief executive of RPI).”
The market is ripe for short-run, personalized, digitally printed products that serve the individual while promoting the brand.
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on Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013 at 2:37 pm and is filed under Digital Printing.
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