The new advisory board: Leo Bianchi, Douglas Hutt, Jenny Cairns, Lucie Tomlin and Stefan Casey
It has been a busy year so far for the DL&P Industry Group with its spring event held at The Retail Institute and a new advisory board set up to help devise the agenda for the upcoming third annual conference in November. By Neel Madsen.
Print for Brand Success conference is an annual event that takes the pulse on the industry, presents the latest case studies and looks ahead to see what innovations are in the pipeline. Statistics show that brands and printers make up a quarter each of the attendees, with the other half being a mix of designers, consultants and suppliers.
‘A few years after we started Digital Labels & Packaging magazine, we realised that we were in the perfect position to help communicate what was happening in digital print to the retailers and brand owners,’ said publisher Marie Rushton. ‘Our first initiative was to bring together a core group of printers that are active in this market. The next step was to make it bigger and increase the reach. This happened around the
now famous ‘Share a Coke’ campaign which was the perfect time to launch our conference.’
The latest initiative has been the establishment of an advisory board to help plan the content of the conference. Members include Douglas Hutt from SAB Miller, Jenny Cairns and Lucie Tomlin from design agency Pearlfisher, Stefan Casey from The Retail Institute, Leo Bianchi, Burton’s Biscuits, and Ian Schofield, Iceland Foods.
Ian Schofield, Iceland Foods
The aim of appointing this board of packaging experts is to grow the conference and further its goal of increasing communication between the stakeholders in the supply chain. Mrs Rushton continued, ‘We want to use the knowledge, experience and perspective of our new advisory board to improve the content and ensure that we are on message.’
What’s cooking?
‘Digital is a culture. Not a technology. This is the perspective we must now acknowledge in terms of innovating for the future. As consumers we have become far more comfortable with including digital into our everyday lives. So our expectations have become exponentially higher that products will provide added value or we will simply go elsewhere in this ever changing global digital village,’ said Douglas Hutt, manager global packaging R&D, SABMiller.
He continued, ‘It is of critical importance that we innovate with digital in mind. The packaging industry is perfectly placed to evolve packaging into a multimedia interactive platform with infinite possibilities to customise. ‘The Print for Brand Success conference provides a high calibre opportunity to take a look into the ‘innovation kitchen’ to see what’s cooking in the future of digital printing for the branded packaging industry and to develop creative and credible opportunities to help steer your business towards a digital future.’
Ian Schofield, own label & packaging manager, Iceland Foods, commented, ‘The annual digital print conference serves as a great reference point for me as to where the trends are going. I am convinced that all end users will be including digital in their marketing plans as it becomes the norm.’
The Retail Institute hosted the first Industry Group event in April
Expert advice
After two successful events, the bar has been raised to come up with even more inspiring and engaging content. The conference programme will also reflect the feedback received at last year’s event where attendees were invited to comment on the content specifically and also list some of the challenges they come up against trying to sell digital print. Some said that they are still encountering the old ‘conventional’ print mindset and that there is a general lack of imagination. It is also difficult to convince brands to be braver, while colour management remains another issue. It is particularly difficult to break down the barriers between the various business functions – design, marketing, procurement, etc – and make them understand the opportunities digital print brings and how these transcend traditional structures and thinking.
Douglas Hutt said, ‘It starts at the design house; they need to have a deep and broader understanding of what digital can do and how it can sit alongside the analogue methods. In my experience, marketing understands the concept, but don’t know how to execute a digital campaign. It is not about bypassing procurement. It is about educating the marketing department.’
Leo Bianchi agreed and added, ‘But procurement needs educating too. It goes across the board.’ Jenny Cairns said, ‘The strategist and the marketers need to be involved too.’ Lucie Tomlin added, ‘Our problem is that we often don’t talk about the print run length early on in the conversation.’
Mr Hutt said, ‘We need to talk about how you bring digital into the mainstream. There are two strands – we need to identify the route forward and we need to know the route to the mass market.’
‘It is the execution that is essential,’ said Ms Tomlin. ‘Consumers feel bombarded with messages. It has to be sophisticated and also have the brand ethos at the core. We have to use digital wisely and overcome the point of consumers feeling it is overwhelming and just too much.’ Ms Cairns said that in her experience there is a certain element of adversity to risk. Clients often hold back a little and tell the designer that they want to be ‘evolutionary’ rather than ‘revolutionary’. Ms Tomlin added, ‘But even if the client does not want to use digital, they still expect it to be available.’
The Digital Print for Brand success conference takes place on 24 November, contact chloe.w@whitmar.co.uk for details.
