BAPC chariman, Sydney Bobb, opens the conference

‘Keep calm – the best is yet to come!’ shouted the 2014 BAPC Conference’s strapline, and printers and equipment vendors came to find out more about that promised land.

The Chancellor George Osborne has been in bombastic mood. The IMF has agreed with him, and the Government has pretty much suggested to the British public that they have never had it so good. Most people have longer memories than that of course, but undeniably the economic indicators are now a cause for optimism.

How much of this optimism is filtering down to printers is open to question, but anecdotally there has been a pick up, and the BAPC sought to continue the feel-good factor with its annual conference, which took place in Elstree in mid-January 2014, bearing the strapline ‘The best is yet to come’.

Beginning this article with the economy was entirely appropriate, since the conference was opened by Dennis Turner, who until he recently retired was the chief economist of HSBC. He pointed out that there are still bumps in the road ahead: consumer debt, with consumers being the driving force of economic growth in the UK; public sector debt, still a huge problem with more than 70% debt to GDP ratio; and Eurozone debt, with most of the UK’s sales going to Europe and the US, which have both been under-performing.

So why, Mr Turner rhetorically asked, is the UK looking at its best year for eight years? Inflation is back at 2%, interest rates should remain steady this year, keeping sterling competitive, real earnings are increasing, debt repayment is underway, there is a slow consumer recovery, and large companies are beginning to act on the backlog of investment that they have been sitting on. The UK’s net trade deficit (ie imports versus exports) is now 2% and improving.

‘This is the best economy in Europe now,’ he said. ‘The policy seems to be working, but growth is not enough; it depends on the sort of growth. We have had an unbalanced economy with not enough investment and exporting. We need to re-balance the economy with more investment, more trade, and less government spending, providing stable and sustainable economic growth. We need globally competitive industries, and industrial production is the most important thing to turn it around. Manufacturing is key to the next 20 years.’ 

There was a surprising fact to ruminate upon in these times when we assume we have little manufacturing left in the UK: the year 2007 was actually the high point for British manufacturing, he said.

‘The industry is there, but although it has been growing it has not grown as fast as everything else,’ Mr Turner continued. ‘Where it used to be about being cheap, it’s now about being smart; it is no longer bulk, but quality, added value, differentiation. George Osborne understands this. We need to reinvent British manufacturing; it is there but it just needs some stimulation.’

Agile SMEs

The great majority of those British manufacturers – in print and elsewhere – remain small tomedium sized businesses, and Steve Lovatt of the innovative new British press manufacturer Lumejet had words of encouragement for these companies, emphasising their creativity and agility in reacting to new opportunities in ways that the big companies cannot match. 

The focus of the industry is very much on shorter runs, higher value print. ‘That’s the sweet spot for SMEs,’ he said. ‘SMEs are passionate about value and quality and customers buy both. Know your customers and don’t be afraid to innovate. Make the most of a new opportunity, because that is where you can grow your business. Don’t be afraid of the competition out there, embrace it. Your competitors will give you ideas.’

Small can be a distinct advantage, said Mr Lovatt; faster, bigger and cheaper is not always better. He concluded: ‘Look at new technology; this is the embryo of opportunity. That’s the most important thing.’

You don’t have to do it all yourself either. The benefits of partnering more formally with a creative agency were explored by Mark Hinder of Konica Minolta and Charlotte Graham-Cumming from the agency Ice Blue Sky. They began by outlining the findings of some research into the marketing activity of SMEs, which suggests that on average such firms spend 47,000 euros on marketing per year. However, they are struggling to market effectively due to issues such as cost, time, lack of expertise, data, and having to justify the ROI.

Mr Hinder said that automation to remove complexity and manual processes and be as productive as possible was the key to success. Printers should also ally with agencies to pull campaigns together and run them for SMEs.

‘Our agency adopted a community model to our business,’ said Ms Graham-Cumming. ‘We have created our own supply chain of services and found some really good partners. The big gap in that has always been engaging with the print sector. We have seen this a lot – there’s a divide that’s caused by both parties, with marketers not understanding print. This has started to change but the biggest challenge was getting printers to engage with us, to come in and proactively suggest ideas.

‘Building relationships is really key; these are not formal arrangements with partners but we have been working with them for more than five years. I would encourage all of you to approach a creative agency, because integrated marketing agencies like us rely heavily on print.’

Change or be changed From Frazer Chesterman, director of exhibition organiser FM Brooks, there was advice on the arts of leadership and managing change. Leadership, he said, is surrounding yourself with people that are like-minded, that are open to new ideas, that will learn, take risks and encourage innovation.

‘In modern business, if you really want to motivate people to think, they need autonomy, mastery and purpose. Your structure needs to be able to give people this.’

With litho printers looking to add more digital print, commercial printers going into wide format, the requirement for more added value jobs, investment in tools to work smarter, and areas such as labels, packaging, industrial, and textile all growing, untouched by online media, change is all around the industry. The question is whether we are going to change with these factors or simply be affected by them. ‘Change or be changed,’ said Mr Chesterman. ‘A big part of getting ahead in business is the willingness to say “why not?”.’

There was a reminder from Canon’s European and UK graphic arts customer marketing manager Andy Harris, about the availability of a software tool, the Print ROI Calculator, which it developed to help answer questions from print buyers about the value of print. The tool covers four specific applications: promotional; multichannel campaigns; information and transactional; and consumer. It is available online at www.canon-europe.com/roi (password: biggerpicture).

‘We developed this to really create a consultative approach for printers, to help them stand out from the crowd. We have had 200 UK PSPs download it and use it, and we are looking for feedback. This is not for every customer engagement and not the answer for every ROI conversation, but it’s a starting point,’ said Mr Harris.

Video stars

The topics of online and social media were dealt with at the conference through a panel discussion in which Peter Jolly, managing director of Duplo UK, Laurence Knopf of Search Engine Rescue, and David Packman from Plucky Marketing, all participated. The panellists were asked about the importance of video as a way of engaging with customers online – something that Peter Jolly said allows Duplo ‘to speak to a lot of people more easily; it’s an extremely efficient tool for us’. He added that certain smaller printing companies have appeared to be bigger than they actually are through creating video content and sharing it with clients.

Laurence Knopf commented: ‘It’s an important business tool certainly. If you can portray yourself with the right quality then it is worthwhile doing it, especially if in your industry not a lot of people are doing so, because you will get a much better chance of having visibility with the search engines for key phrases than you would get just through web pages.

‘Google is also obsessed with universal search – they will show lots of types of media in a search field, rather than just a list of websites, so it is much more likely that your video will appear, compared to competitors that only have a website.’

However, David Packman emphasised that video and YouTube should not be used in a standalone way, but should be integrated with the rest of a marketing strategy, with social media certainly being a good way to promote video content so more people view it.

A further question concerned the most common mistakes that companies made in social media. David Packman’s response serves to sum it up: ‘Jumping on the back of social media because everyone is doing it; moving into social media without any strategy, and that’s extremely common; posting content just for the sake of it. It should be in sync with marketing strategy.’

The BAPC does in fact offer a draft social media policy for print companies to better address this aspect of their business.