MAKING PRINT DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
Peter Lancaster, CEO, Documobi Ltd. IN AN INCREASINGLY MOBILE WORLD
Print, as a medium, is under considerable pressure from a plethora of new communication technologies, the vast majority of them harnessing personalized text, webpages, photos and video. These new channels are instant, viral and measurable—all the things Print is not, but must become.
The Magazine 12 9.2015
The Consumer’s Changing Habits Digital innovation is changing the way consumers interact with brands. For example, during Q2 2015 for the first time, more people in the U.K. connected to the Internet using a mobile phone than via desktop com- puters. More emails are read on phones than desktop computers, and social media access is already 80% mobile.
Many people under the age of 30 (most marketing executives) don’t have computers at home. Many no longer use email (except at work). Most don’t use SMS any more, rather they use iMessage, WhatsApp, and/or Snapchat. Most read fewer newspapers, magazines, and print in general. To them, the Print Industry’s “cross media” core proposition of Printed PURL/email/SMS is increasingly less effective compared to real-time mobile interaction.
• Gen Y effectively controls the “tech” of marketing through social media.
• Gen Y wants CMOs to spend more on “digital” and less on “analog.” • Gen Y can download an app quicker than we can type in a PURL.
Some Major Issues None of the known “scanning” technologies such as QR Codes, NFC Tags, Digital Watermarks and AR can work with all forms of Print (Billboards, packaging, mailers, fabrics, digital signage etc), none can work with all handset/operating systems or indeed with previously printed items, due to the restrictions imposed by the laws of physics and/or processes and method.
Brands cannot (and do not) expect a consumer to interact with their brand via QR Codes on some things, NFC on another (but only some Android phones), AR on another, and Watermarks on something else (but not anything large or with solid colors). They also do not expect a consumer to download multiple third-party apps that also enable their competitors’ collateral.
A Call to Arms Print, as a medium, can (and must) do better than this. It’s not about one individual piece of Print being interactive—it’s about making all Print interactive, responsive, and within an appropriate context. Printers must make any analog (printed) visual instance of the Brand a digital interface to an increasingly mobile world.
Consider the possibilities of allowing a user to embed a video into a greeting card for a specific recipient; or product packaging that enables users to upload a video review of the product. The printed packaging (or mailer, POS, press ad etc) can become the “Trip Advisor” of the product. Users, especially brand advocates, could record a video into a mailer or press ad showing their tips and tricks on how to use the product then put that out to social media in a potentially viral way. Unlike YouTube, the Brand can have total control over what is published and when.
Print was the original Social Media. It still holds sway today, but it is facing some severe challenges from the young, tech savvy marketers who determine how those marketing dollars are spent. It’s time to reboot print. It’s time to digitize the medium of print. We need to find the time to do this—and we need to do so now!
The documobiFUSE Solution
In October 2014, after several years of Prior Art, Documobi was granted a US Patent. This covers the embedding and linking of user generated content (UGC) into printed media using smartphones, tablets and wearable devices. It changes the way Print works with User Generated Content (UGC), which is fast becoming the bedrock of Content Management. Now, users can “record” and “play” Print.
documobiFUSE puts a dynamic mobile front end to these existing print-based cross-media systems, doing so much more with their sophisticated one-to-one capabilities. By the same token, FUSE can also harness WordPress, Joomla et al to do some great things on a budget. Crucially, all print (whenever it was printed) can now be digitally interactive, dynamic, and measurable.
Visit
www.documobi.com to learn more.
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