The Print Council plans an integrated print campaign to promote print as an advertising and marketing medium and increase its use.
The announcement comes during this week's Graph Expo trade show and conference in Chicago. The Print Council is a business development alliance that promotes the use of print media. Founding members include Cenveo, IBM, International Paper, Pitney Bowes, Quad/Graphics and Xerox.
“There are a lot of people out there who just don't understand the power of print and the power of print in combination with other media,” said Paul Reilly, Cenveo chairman/president/CEO and acting leader of the council's executive council. “The goal of this campaign is to get that word out.”
The first element is a series of full-page ads in publications that donated space, including USA Today and printing publications such as American Printer, Graphic Arts Monthly and Printing Impressions. The ads will include the URL for the council's newly revamped site, www.theprintcouncil.org.
Two of the ads offer statistics from the Multichannel Catalog Study, completed by comScore Networks Inc., Reston, VA, earlier this year for the U.S. Postal Service. One shows a woman looking through a catalog and states: “Online consumers who received a printed catalog from any given retailer were nearly twice as likely to make an online purchase at the retailer's Web site.”
Another ad features a conveyer belt with packages, a package delivery person and a block of post office boxes, and it uses 2001-02 research from the Direct Marketing Association and Wharton Economic Forecasting Associates. It says, “A return on investment of 13 to 1. Print makes it possible.”
Two mail campaigns also launch next month. One targets marketing managers and other executives in the Richmond, VA, area. Richmond was chosen as a test area based on Print Council research. If the test goes well, the campaign will go national.
“The goal of this mail piece is to get them to understand that they should consider print for their campaigns and consider putting more money into print,” said Thaddeus B. Kubis, president of NAK Marketing & Communications Inc., New York, which created the campaign pro bono.
The other targets national printers “to let them know that there is an industry association out there that is actively helping them get new business,” Kubis said.
