The Future of Promotional Print in an Increasingly Digital World

26 August 2009

Promotional print essentially includes all of the marketing material produced by a company to promote its services and products. Direct mail is the principle product but others include: brochures, inserts, calendars, financial and annual reports, posters, and point of purchase material to name a few. Direct mail has been around as a part of the sales and marketing mix for many years and despite its 'love hate' relationship with its recipients it continues to flourish. However, there has been steady decline as marketing groups reappraise their spend and look for alternative, cheaper ways such as e-mail, to communicate with the market.

In response to this rapidly changing environment and its potential impact on the paper sector, Pira International is launching a new multi-client project to investigate the factors and trends that are impacting the use of promotional print and the way in which paper is required and used. Information will be obtained through primary research and supported by secondary research. The emphasis will be on qualitative data, underpinned by quantitative data.

Growing interest in environmental issues and the young generation's digital familiarity will accelerate the e-based direct market expansion. This will allow the technology to penetrate existing paper-based industries even more. Additional functions such as displaying moving pictures and real-time downloading information will also change the paper-based business environment.
Up to now direct mail has not only survived the competition from electronic media, but has also exploited opportunities offered by the new media which provides greater interactivity. This has fed through to enhanced one to one communication with printed media. This is resulting in a reduction in the size of mailings as they become more carefully and accurately targeted.

For the paper industry, direct mail products have been an important printed paper product stream in the developed world and, increasingly in the developing world, accounting for around a third of the demand for graphic papers.

However, the direct mail industry has to continually revise and improve its offering in the light of competing media, environmental concerns and costs of product and its delivery. As the direct mail industry becomes more targeted, overall paper demand will decrease. More and more direct mail products are being based on higher quality grades, for example coated woodfree, and are being digitally printed to ensure a higher quality, personalised product that the recipient is more likely to open and read. Thus while overall paper demand will decrease, some specific grades are likely to increase.

The current global economic downturn means that there is heightened scrutiny on return on investment for marketing/advertising spend by companies. However, current consumers' actions indicate that promotional offers sent by direct mail are still profoundly powerful ways to initiate consumer action in a depressed market. The question is will the paper based versions be increasingly superseded by e-based alternatives as they become more acceptable and are cheaper to produce and distribute?

Understanding how such factors will develop in these current conditions and in the future; and the likely take up of promotional printed products by different parts of the world and the population will be key to establishing the likely impact on paper consumption.

The output of the research will be used to develop a number of scenarios that will be used to forecast the consumption of paper for promotional print over the next 1, 3, and 5 years. Such scenarios and the assumptions on which they are based can then be interrogated in line with specific needs and requirements. The scenarios will be developed around the output of research investigating likely issues and trends. These will include:

• Demographic factors
• Economic trends
• Technology developments- e.g. electronic media; digital printing
• Geographical factors
• Environmental considerations

Project sponsors will receive a report describing the results and analysis of the research; the scenario development and the assumptions on which they are built; and the consequences of realisation of a given scenario on future use of paper for promotional print. In addition, sponsors will receive working versions of the scenarios to allow further in-house analysis to be made as required.

The project is scheduled to start in September and will be completed by December 2009.

Project sponsors are expected to be drawn from paper manufacturers, filler and chemical suppliers, OEM's, paper merchants and others who are involved with the manufacture, conversion and selling of paper for use in promotional print.

Early-bird discounts are available to subscribers who order before Friday September 11th. This will also give subscribers the opportunity to influence the scope of the project.

For more information, please contact Stephen Hill on +44 (0) 1372 802 025 or Graham Moore on +44 1372 80 2127.