Print and marketing in the age of disruption: building your business for the world that is coming

Club FESPA spoke to Rusty Pepper, Head of Global Markets and Partnerships at Taylor Corporation, about how printers must forge a new relationship with marketing.

Among all the fascinating presentations at the FESPA Conference in Barcelona, one of the most interesting was actually about what the print and marketing trades were getting wrong. Or, at least, not getting quite right. Rusty Pepper of Taylor Corporation; self-confessed champion for print-on-demand; and the presenter of that keynote’s messages – says the way that print and marketing now co-exist needs to change.

“There’s an age of disruption that’s happening. The big disruption isn’t necessarily the technology; it’s the changing expectations of the customer. They’ve grown up in the age of Amazon, where we can all get things the next day. Those same expectations are there when people now buy print, promo or any of the other marketing items that we do in this industry. So, a print industry that removes the friction for them to be able to order is going to be massive,” Rusty says.

“We have to be able to think about how we can meet those changing expectations rather than forcing customers, as we’ve always done, to work around our processes. Printers in the future are going to give customers the tools to put the control in their own hands. That’s where print on demand comes in: allowing them to get what and how much they need, when and where they need it, without having to go through the challenges and frustrations traditionally associated with print.

“The areas we need to think about are: how are marketing departments looking at their supply chain? How are they trying to manage their spend? How are they trying to manage the brand? And then, what changes are happening within the supply chain that can start to leverage the tools that exist in areas like print on demand?”

So, what are the specific areas where printers and marketers can rethink their relationship? Rusty outlines nine areas where a more modern, sophisticated approach can bridge the disconnect.

“Cost-per-unit is a manufacturing metric, not a marketing metric. Value isn’t created at production, it’s created at use. Zero usage equals zero value, regardless of unit cost. The proposed replacement is ‘return on impressions’ – measured via time-to-market, usage/reorder rates, and adoption by location.”