The pitch: High-tech approach ensures communicators' content is king

By SUNNETTE KENNARD*

Many environmental factors drive change in business today and affect how businesses communicate. New technology is one area that is having an impact on the marketing and communications industry.

What do your customers and target audiences want? What are their challenges?

Although technology is shrinking the world, there has been an explosion in the amount of information available to individuals.

Often the information we get is sent without it being requested - it is being "pushed" rather than "pulled".

With an overload of information, we build barriers to block what is irrelevant to us. "Mass marketing" is no longer effective. Audiences want to be talked to intelligently, treated as individuals and to receive information that is relevant and important to them. And even with all the advantages of the internet, people still like to receive and read printed communications.

How can marketers respond? What are their communication needs? Who can meet these needs?

First, as marketers you are part of a supply chain. You are delivering information and messages to your audiences in the most effective and efficient way. That results in your audiences taking some action - to buy your goods and services.

In a competitive environment, being top-of-mind, brand of choice, is what marketers strive for. Communication materials have to grab attention - it's about having impact as well as driving a response.

It is also about being able to react quickly to changing customer and market needs. So when your target audiences are discerning and narrowly defined, what's the best way to deliver communications that get an enthusiastic response?

It's all about seamless processes from organisation to advertising or design agency, to print service provider, to your customers or your other target audiences.

It's also about being able to take your communications to the next level and realise the benefits of one-to-one marketing and relationship management. This is where an organisation's communication supply chain partners come in - the agencies and print service providers.

How can agencies ensure they are using the latest methods to provide more effective communications and achieve greater response rates for their clients? For print service providers, it's about linking all the communication needs involved in reaching narrowly defined target groups, delivering content that is up-to-date, using colour to achieve impact and maximising returns from their investments in areas like CRM systems and visual assets.

Electronic Print Solutions (EPS), a division of MH Communicate, has just installed an HP Indigo 3000 press, which is the first of a new generation of digital printing presses to reach the New Zealand market. This new press can match the quality of traditional offset printing and also provide the benefits of personalised, variable data printing.

Until now, digital presses have been limited to four-colour printing and some to using toners or powders, rather than ink.

The HP Indigo 3000 press uses six ink colours on press and provides ink-on-paper, offset quality.

Its six colour units allow EPS to offer clients a broader range of extremely vivid colours, with better brightness and contrast so they can match a greater range of corporate brand colours, and add maximum visual impact to virtually all their printed materials.

The press can also place variable colour data (such as images, names and addresses, and tables) on to any page of a document at any stage without disturbing the print run, to provide customised documents.

This represents a real-life example of the latest technology being used by marketers and communicators to improve their communication supply chain process, and to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the marketing dollars they spend. It's all about working smarter to achieve better cost-benefit results.

* Sunnette Kennard is marketing manager of MH Communicate, of Auckland, an electronic print and internet-based communications supply chain service provider.

* The Pitch is a forum for those working in advertising, marketing, public relations and communications. We welcome lively and topical 500-word contributions.
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