UPM_News_2016

Our personalized campaigns have generated a great social media buzz and uplift in sales.

Printed for YOUR EYES ONLY

This year’s Printed Innovation of the Year is a revolution in a box: a digital print head enabling newspapers to be uniquely customized to engage reader involvement.

Text: Silja Kudel Photos: DC Thomson, newsawards

T here’s something heart-warming about the idea of your newspaper calling you by name and wishing you a merry Christmas. Just as there’s something fun and appealing about your evening tabloid turning into a per- sonal lottery ticket after you’ve fin- ished reading it. All this – and more – is now possi- ble thanks to a new hybrid solution that won UK publishers DC Thomson the Printed Innovation of the Year title at newsawards 2016 in London earlier this year. Founded in 1905 and headquartered in Dundee, Scotland, DC Thomson is best known as the producer of The Dundee Courier and The Sunday Post . It is one of the UK’s leading media or-

ganizations, with a second home base in London’s world-famous Fleet Street. Offset quality with inkjet DC Thomson’s printing plant in Dun- dee installed the new hybrid system in March 2015, enabling the production of bespoke newspapers with individu- alized marketing content. “Each copy of the newspaper is dif- ferent. We simply leave a white space and use the digital head to print unique content without having to swap plates,” explains Head of Operations Guy Forester , who runs DC Thomson’s contract print arm, Discovery Print. The Kodak Prosper S-Series Imprint- ing System is based on stream technol- ogy, which Forester describes as “pret-

to a local shopping mall to have their uniquely printed bar codes scanned by a road show team. After the code was scanned, a video would appear on the screen revealing whether the reader had won a Toy Chest or a consolation prize from Santa’s sack. “We saw a 39% increase in sales that day. Some readers even bought multi- ple copies,” says Matthews. Football – a topic guaranteed to grab reader attention in the UK – has provid- ed a great platform for giveaway cam- paigns. In a recent promotion, read- ers had to match their uniquely printed copies of the newspaper with the cor- rect scorer and the correct time in the UEFA European Championships. “If, say, your copy of the newspaper said ‘Ronaldo 23 minutes’, then you won a prize if Ronaldo scored at 23 minutes,” describes Matthews. Matthews is brimming with fresh ideas for using the new hybrid op- tion, which she sees as offering bound- less exciting commercial opportunities. “All our campaigns so far have gener- ated a great social media buzz and up- lift in sales and readership.” In addition to winning the Printed In- novation of the Year title at newsawards 2016, DC Thomson also took home the award for Best Regional Newspaper Printer of the Year. The Courier was additionally awarded as Best Region- al Newspaper. “It was a good night for us. We en- tered three categories and won all three,” concludes Forester.

ty ingenious”. Operating at full run- ning speed of 90,000 copies per hour, the print head consists of 2,400 tiny lit- tle nozzles that spray one billion drops of ink per second. It can do all the same things as an inkjet printer, but with off- set quality. “The print head provides us with the ability to produce tailored adver- tising campaigns via uniquely printed barcodes and coupons. It also enables us to produce micro-promotions using personalized text and images,” explains Forester. Making readers feel special No less clever than the technology is DC Thomson’s creative use of its com- mercial capabilities. Group Marketing Manager Kirsty Matthews has coordi- nated numerous fun campaigns captur- ing reader engagement. The first campaign involved a unique code added to the Saturday magazine. If readers wanted to see if they had won a prize, they had to buy a copy of the Monday newspaper. This was fol- lowed by the hugely popular ‘Merry Christmas Loyal Customer’ campaign, which earned The Evening Telegraph the Scottish Press Innovation Award for 2016. “To create cheer on Christmas Eve, we changed the masthead to wish read- ers a Merry Xmas using a randomized selection of loyal readers’ names on the front page. The campaign created a lot of social engagement. Our sales nor- mally drop on Christmas Eve because everyone is out shopping, but now we saw a year-on-year increase of 30%,”

reveals Matthews. Football fever

View DC Thomson’s short video of the hybrid print innovation: https://m.youtube.com/ watch?v=u0QCnUPwKvI

Another crowd favourite was The Evening Telegraph’s Toy Chest com- petition, which drove hordes of readers

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