Ed #15 Interactive Print

We’re all communicators. When it comes to communication to advance business interests, most would agree that success boils down to five elements: attention, clarity, emotion, differentiation and memory. You want your messages to be noticed, then clearly and easily understood. You want to create a personal, emotional connection. You want to be perceived as different and better than your competition. And you want to be remembered when the time comes to buy.

Ed knows that it takes a mix of media to get the job done. The best communication strategies combine multiple communication channels to get the message out. And print still has advantages over electronic media. It’s tactile and accessible, and it’s always “on”—electronic communication requires electric power, while print communication requires only that someone pick it up.

It’s pretty obvious that your message can’t succeed if it isn’t read, and this is a critical consideration in direct mail and its digital counterpart, email marketing. There’s little doubt that email is less expensive. But in a world where recipients are bombarded by spam and other unsolicited email—which has to get through various filters to even have a shot at being opened—a subject line has a tough time competing with a well-designed envelope.

Research continues to show that printed communication is a highly effective means to reach buyers. One interesting study provides an insight into the role of design in getting someone to open an envelope. Pitney Bowes commissioned research to identify the factors that could influence a person’s decision to open a piece of mail.¹ The findings: Participants were 69 percent more likely to open a piece of mail with color text and graphics printed on the front of the envelope.

^{1 Pitney Bowes, Color Makes a Noticeable Difference, July 27, 2010}

Electronic communications continue to grow in popularity and use, but the wonderful advance of high-technology devices and Web-based media has done nothing to diminish what has always worked so well for paper and printed communications.

Print is simple. Nothing is more accessible and immediate. You don’t need a device. There’s nothing to power on. All your readers need are the things they carry with them everywhere they go: their hands and their eyes.

Here’s the other great thing about print: It interacts well with other media. Print can leverage its advantages—its accessibility, simplicity, its emotional connection—to steer readers to a website, a video, an e-catalog or other location. It’s more than interactivity with the reader. It’s a highly effective means to get your target to a place where digital media can provide more information, deepen the experience with sound and motion, or make the sale online.

Clever ideas tied to the subject matter have always been effective. They’re no less effective now. In fact, with so much clutter, so many communication channels vying for your audience’s attention, a fresh, creative idea is noticed and appreciated now more than ever.

And paper presents a very broad canvas to paint upon. Whether it’s a traditional die cut applied in a fresh way, or more elaborate pop-up or pull-tab concepts, there are many tried-and-true techniques that create opportunities for real, literal interactivity—the reader moves the paper, the message moves the reader.

Pull on a spiral die cut score over the image of an orange to reveal an image of the peeled orange underneath. Bring a product to life for a consumer interacting with a window-shade pull-tab assembly and animate an image or message or both by pulling it back and forth.

It’s called stopping power, and it buys you all kinds of time with your audience to communicate and create a relationship that can translate into a purchase or other desired action. Unique production techniques in printed collateral also tend to be saved or passed on rather than thrown away, or can be recycled.

Sometimes adding a non-paper material to the piece creates the desired result. A great example is a magazine advertising insert produced by Americhip, a specialist in “multisensory advertising and marketing technologies,” for a major beverage company—the concept used bubble wrap to capture the carbonation feature in the promotion of a new sparkling water product.

The advertisement scored very high in recall metrics—in a survey conducted by Gfk NOP World, it received a 96 percent “noted” score (the percentage of readers who remember seeing the ad) and a 95 percent “associated” score (the percentage of readers who associated the product with the advertiser). Of the respondents, 78 percent were more interested in trying the product after seeing the ad; half said they physically interacted with the advertisement, popping some of the bubbles.

In recent years, ink technology has advanced to break new ground in communicating messages and product attributes. Inks that are heat reactive, chill reactive, touch reactive, ultraviolet-light reactive, even water reactive are available to bring a whole new level of interactivity and differentiation to the communication.

Imagine a sun-oriented product or message promotion printed in UV-sensitive ink that is visible only in natural sunlight. Or an image that changes colors with the heat of a hand touching it. Or a water-based product or message with a seemingly blank area that reveals a message or image visible only when dipped in water or wiped with a moist cloth or paper towel. These techniques can be fun and effective, they bring new meaning to the word “interactive”—and they’re only possible through the print medium.

Some of the inks are even available in reversible or permanent-change formulations—some where the color changes or transforms from invisible to visible, then changes back to its original state when the temperature or moisture level returns to normal; others that change permanently when activated.

Ideas matter. Tools like specialized reactive inks are just one more way to get the wheels turning to develop new ways to be heard, understood and remembered above the noise.

For more than a decade, companies like Americhip have pioneered multi-sensory marketing techniques and technologies for highly unique, impactful and effective ways to connect advertisers with potential customers.

Rare 10 years ago, sound chips are now relatively common. A walk down a supermarket greeting-card aisle is enough to convince you—there are now whole sections dedicated to cards that play songs and other sound effects when opened.

This technology has proven highly effective in advertising. One national shampoo brand created a magazine advertising insert that sang the name of a new active ingredient to the tune of the well-known Hallelujah Chorus.

Recall numbers were unprecedented. Market researchers RoperASW measured 100 percent “noted,” “associated” and “read some” (read some of the copy) scores, the first time anyone at that firm had seen 100 percent levels in any of these measures of stopping power and branding success, let alone all three. In addition, 88 percent of those surveyed reopened the singing insert and 90 percent rated it as something they would pass along to others. Powerful.

Light-emitting diode (LED) technology has reached a level of miniaturization that it can also add to the impact, interactivity and effectiveness of print. Australia’s Yellow Tail wines created a magazine advertising insert that incorporated four LED lights that blinked in a random sequence to illuminate firefly images in the ad. LED’s low cost (ranging from 10¢–15¢ per unit), low power requirement and versatility—the ability to fade in and out, change colors and other effects—make this technology an exciting, surprisingly viable option.

“Video in Print” is another advance. An ultrathin screen, available in multiple sizes, can be programmed with up to 45 minutes of video or audio content and placed in a printed brochure or advertising insert. It runs on batteries that can be recharged through a USB port, which also allows it to be reused—readers can remove the unit and load their own content. Americhip, the first to offer this technology, does not publish client results, but the firm does say that in the first year alone, nearly 20 percent of the global brands that invested in video-in-print programs reordered within three months.

With the continued growth in the number of smartphone users, augmented reality (AR) technology is expanding and evolving how print engages readers. Printed pages with AR connectivity can take the reader to websites, videos, related images and additional information through smartphone cameras. Product information from a package in a grocery store aisle, three-dimensional imagery from a magazine ad, a video with sound from a brochure or catalog page—all are examples of augmented reality making print more interactive and fun.

In one interesting application of the technology, automaker Ford’s Lincoln division recently integrated its brand heritage into a product brochure. Point a smartphone or tablet camera at each new product image and see a vintage Lincoln car photo, shot in a similar setting.

Many are predicting augmented reality to continue to grow. Research published by Jupiter Research predicts that installation of mobile AR apps will reach 2.5 billion per year by 2017².

^{2 http://www.juniperresearch.com/viewpressrelease.php?pr=334}

Whether it’s traditional techniques like die cuts for pop-ups or pull tabs, or new technologies such as video-in-print or augmented reality (AR), print is truly interactive, with the ability to connect both with the reader and other media. And it’s constantly evolving, leveraging the medium’s immediacy and visual impact to create emotion, memory and results in new and exciting ways.

More than ever, the ability of printed communication to reach and influence a targeted audience is limited only by the human imagination.

Which means, of course, that it’s unlimited.