Post-processing ensures that the message gets through
Every day, we are faced with thousands of competing marketing messages. Message originators get their message across as long as they are able to grab customers attention and speak to them in exactly the right way.
Hansaprint's Key Account Manager Olga Hirvirinne points out that post-processing provides numerous possibilities for standing out from the crowd, and for bringing added value to the printed product.
"We can achieve special effects, for instance, by using various varnishes and films, and we can also use colours that create an impression of warmth. Added to that, an extra cover can be used to achieve greater impact. And, for instance, plastic has also become common in effects created using various coatings,."
Special effects are used particularly in adverts and supplements.
"Various product samples, ranging from shampoo samples to tea bags, can also be added to magazines," Hirvirinne says.
A supplement beats an attached file
Key Account Director Sirkka-Liisa Murtola emphasises that supplements offer magazine advertisers, and others, a major competitive asset compared with electronic media. "Supplements can include scents and tastes, they can pander to the sense of touch - they can be used to achieve things that the electronic media can only dream about," Murtola explains. Conversely, Hirvirinne points out that supplements and post-processing in general create possibilities that allow print media and electronic media to be made to work efficiently together and to support each other.
"One possibility is to incorporate an electronic code that can be scanned with a mobile phone into a supplement - or even into an outdoor advertisement. These codes can be used to order additional info to be sent to your mobile phone, such as a trailer for a hit film due for release. Electronic-media solutions - a strongpoint of Hansaprint's close collaborator Luovia Oy - will certainly be more common in the future."
Hansaprint is also able to target supplements precisely. This reduces supplementing costs and increases hit rates.
"We might think of a female reader getting a product sample of an anti-aging cream, while a male reader of the same magazine gets an aftershave product," Murtola says.
"Selective binding allows different targeted supplements to be added in a single run, without splitting up the address register, thus avoiding subset-mailings and saving on mailing costs. Hansaprint also collaborates with the Finland Post Group - we are still in the front line in responding efficiently to changing demands, while minimising costs."
Post-processing, of course, also offers a lot of other options for message targeting and personalisation.
The first example that Olga Hirvirinne mentions is selective binding, and Koiramme (Our Dogs) magazine, with its different versions for hunting-dog and pet-dog enthusiasts. "In its own way, targeting goes even further in Yhteishyvä (The Common Good) magazine. Several different versions of this are made, and then the magazines are supplemented at the packaging stage with personal-account statements, plus various precisely targeted add-ons, some of which can also be personalised."
"Inkjet printing allows account statements to be printed at a rate of 24,000 an hour, i.e. with digital technology even large print runs can still be modified in the post-processing phase to make them individual and personal," Hirvirinne observes.
A full-service house
Hansaprint is also able to serve customers efficiently by combining digital technology with offset technology - in one and the same printed product.
"During post-processing, products made using offset printing can be combined with a personalised cover made using digital technology, making the printed product individual."
Hirvirinne reminds us that it is easy for customers to order post-processing:
"Hansaprint is a full-service house. In addition to a traditional printing service, if they require it, people can also get the whole spectrum of services, from product design to logistics, to customer-data analysis services, and on to advanced regular-customer solutions, all under the same roof.
Creativity and courage that fit through a letterbox Marketing and Research Director Saara Itävuo of The Finnish Periodical Publishers Association (FPPA) says post-processing and supplements give magazine advertising more impact and a chance to stand out from the crowd.
"It is positive that the trend is towards even bolder and more creative solutions. For example, in product samples, people often appeal to the different senses in ways that electronic media simply cannot."
Nevertheless, Itävuo says that, for example, Southern Europe is a step ahead in the use of supplements. There, a magazine can come with a free gift of, say, a beach ball or flip-flops. "In Finland nobody would go quite that far. For a start, we are limited by the fact that 95 percent of magazines are subscribed to for home delivery, and hefty packages won't fit through the letterbox.
Itävuo says selective binding is also a current buzz word abroad; with different covers being made for the same magazine - one for retail sale, one for orders, and others for various special groups.
The FPPA has set up a collaborative group of printers, the aim being to tell media sales people in particular what can be done with supplements.
