Archives: Print

The ONE pop-up flyer

Pop-up ONE flyer

This one (or ‘ONE’) falls into the ‘interesting but meaningless’ category (as opposed to the overflowing ‘boring and meaningless’ category). It’s basically an A4 sheet with a fold and then, when you open it up, hey presto, there’s a big pop-up ONE. Why?*

The pop-up ‘ONE’ is another sheet which has been die-cut, folded and glued inside the main sheet so that it stands up on opening. It’s a basic piece of paper engineering which is, nevertheless, nice to see in a piece of marketing collateral. There should be more of it. The art of paper engineering is a much-neglected aspect of the whole print communication nexus (you see, I speak the lingo). Long before digital technology discovered the thrill of Augmented Realities, paper people were accomplished at making 3D environments.

Typically, pop-ups are associated with children’s books and, no doubt, many of us have fond memories, either from our own books or those of our children, of the excitement of turning the page and seeing a whole panorama spring to life. It’s pure magic – so why not use a little of it for the more mundane, grown-up topics of banking and superannuation?

I can’t help feeling though that, in this case, it could have been used for something rather more exciting that a big ONE. OK, so that is the message and, in order to make sure that we get it, I understand the rationale behind making it big, blue, shiny and STANDING UP. Fair enough. Sometimes though it would be nice if the message could beguile, charm or seduce, rather than just CLUB me into acknowledging it. Just a thought.

I figure there will be many long days before I see another pop-up flyer, so it’s just a little dispiriting that this should be the ONE.

* Why ONE? Apparently, it refers to the estimated $1.1 billion lost each year through misplaced superannuation accounts, although heaven knows how they arrive at such a figure. And it’s not even ONE. It’s ONE POINT ONE. Don’t they care about the other missing $100 million? How casual. I’m not giving them my super if that’s how relaxed they are about money.

shredded paper

The street posters

Street posters

Anybody feeling the urge to fulminate about the environmental vandalism of paper should look no further than the street poster. Arriving in the dead of night, these fugitive print propagandists seek to colonise any free public space, from poles to construction hoardings, spreading like a fungal growth.

It’s bad enough that, in situ, they blight our nice, clean, empty spaces with their gaudy colours and bold images, what’s worse is that, once, up, they must come down, typically in the aftermath of a rain storm when they are sloughed off like dead leaves. Then away they go, shredded and scattered, driven hither and thither by the wind, littering the footpaths, congregating in our drains and waterways.

That’s the problem with paper; it’s just so damn obvious (you don’t see discarded television signals lying around, do you? Or bytes). If only it could be more discrete, delicately flushed away with all the other waste products rather than doing its business in the street.

But that’s also the reason why advertisers like it, because it is so hard to ignore, even if the sideways looks and cursory glances provoke pin-pricks of irritation and anxiety in passers-by. Made you look. As Todd Sampson, ABC TV Gruen Transfer panellist, commented, the appeal of billboards and posters as a marketing tool is that they are “one of the few forms of advertising that’s beyond the reach of the empowering remote control or the dismissive mouse.”

So maybe part of the reason why bill posters regularly raise the ire of the authorities is because they can’t be controlled. They are an imposition. They impinge upon our consciousness whether we like it or not (and usually we don’t), whether we need them or not (and sometimes we do, if only to discover something we didn’t know).

Posters are among the most ephemeral print products in the public space, not just because they appear and disappear like tradesmen, there one minute and gone the next, but also because of what they chronicle, the never-ending cavalcade of minstrels and troubadours which passes across the stage. If somebody was to chart the disposable world of street posters over the years (and no doubt somebody has), the result would be a flicker-book of changing musical tastes and fashions, a chronology of the rise and fall (and revival) of generations of singers, comedians and entertainers.

Street posters

This is history that’s lying on the pavement, scraps of the quotidian, never to be repeated.

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The Yellow Pages

The Yellow Pages

I finally found this year’s Yellow Pages directory buried beneath a pile of (unread) magazines and newspapers. I’m not sure how long it had been there but, by analysing the layers of print deposits, it is possible to reconstruct a timeline. I estimate it was delivered and died some time around March this year and has since lain undiscovered. That says everything about how often I need the Yellow Pages these days.

I’ve written about the White Pages previously; the Yellow Pages directory is its smaller, more colourful sibling. Together, they are among the biggest, most obvious examples of the waning of print as a mass communications medium in favour of online platforms. Once upon a time, Yellow Pages ruled the roost when it came to small business marketing. It practically set its own terms. Any small business which missed out on its Yellow Pages listing faced the prospect of becoming invisible, and possibly extinct. Not any more. There are other ways of being found now.

Earlier this year, the publisher of both directories, Sensis, signalled its intention to move away from an ‘an outdated print-based model’ and focus more on digital marketing. As a result, PMP, which currently holds the contract to print both volumes, has closed down its directories printing plant at Chullora in Sydney.

So what we are looking at here is an endangered print species – the information and search directory – albeit one which, as recently as 2011, had a circulation of over 1.5 million copies in Sydney alone. It’s still a big beast but wounded now, perhaps fatally. The pages feel hollowed out, large areas greyed out, particularly in the locality guides. And that’s despite the fact that it now comes in a smaller format of less than 900 pages, a far cry from its glory days when it was big enough to require two fat volumes.

Of course, the irony here is that the current Yellow Pages is a highly-evolved specimen of print; not so much reduced as refined. It is environmentally sensitive; carbon neutral, recyclable, sourced from managed forests. The colour print is laudable, particularly given what it is printed on and the speed at which it is produced. It tries really, really hard to be friendly and community-minded. And, you know, when I sat down to read this edition (not cover to cover – hey, I do have a life) I actually learnt something interesting about the place where I live.

Unfortunately it wasn’t how to find a decent plumber (still searching for that one).

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The special offer

Direct mail that works

So let’s be perfectly clear here: if you’re going to write ‘Something special for you’ on your direct mail and have it visible in the address window with the appearance of having been hand-written by you especially for me, like a friend, like a special friend might write a message on the envelope – Sealed with a kiss, NORWICH – if you’re going to do that, actually pretend to be a friend with something special to offer an especially special person, then whatever is inside the envelope had better be PRETTY BLOODY SPECIAL.

If not, there will be consequences. Dire consequences. Your credibility will be shredded and I’ll never believe anything you tell me ever again. Moreover, I’ll tell all my friends (yes, I have some) that you can’t be trusted and that anything you say should be totally dissed and treated like the naked, evil, conniving LIE that it is.

So whatever is inside that envelope had better not be the ‘opportunity’ to save 10% when I spend lots of money with you by signing up for something I don’t really want. That’s not special. That’s really very ordinary indeed. It had better not be an invitation to attend a ‘seminar’ with the chance to win something I probably won’t win and certainly don’t want. That’s not special either. And please don’t make it a ‘Special Introductory Offer’. I’ve had those before and they never work out.

So… SPORTSCRAFT (for that is who it is), what ‘special’ thing have you got for me inside that envelope?

[drum roll]

And you know, it’s not bad at all. It’s a $20 gift card and birthday wishes. That’s nice. That’s more than I get from some family members (you know who you are).

So… well done SPORTSCRAFT, that was a pleasant experience.

It’s good to see a direct mail piece that works because, when it does, it’s a reminder of just how powerful DM can be as a marketing medium. It’s got great cut-through. Equally, when it’s bad, it can be a totally pointless exercise, like sending smoke signals in a cyclone.

A lot of work has gone into this little envelope – the creative, the data management, the production of the plastic gift card, getting all the variable data to print in the right place, marrying up all the different elements. Because it works, I imagine it’s probably been road tested to the nth degree but, like all good DM campaigns, you can see where the money has been spent.

The other thing I like about this print item is that the trigger for it was an online purchase. We hear a lot about how the internet is killing print but here’s a print item that came into existence because of the internet. It’s a different sort of print – variable data, plastic card – but it highlights how the different media can work together, reinforcing the customer contact, prolonging the retail experience. In all likelihood, the print item will generate another online transaction and so on.

The experts call this ‘cross-media’ communication or marketing. I’ve sat through quite a few seminars about it over the years and usually I have no idea what the people who espouse it are going on about but, by way of confirmation that it does actually exist, here’s an living, breathing example of it in the wild. Special indeed.

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The pager direct mail

Not a real pager

As we all know, the first challenge of any direct mail item is to get the recipient to open up, to interrupt the habitual response which results in unwanted items being transferred from post box to waste bin in a matter of seconds. Of course, there will always be those saddos with nothing better to do than to read everything that crosses their path regardless of its utility. These are the sort of people who usually wind up blogging about it. Endlessly. Moronically.

Nobody cares about these types, certainly not the producers of the direct mail. They want customers, people who will respond to a carefully-crafted daub of pigmented liquid deposited on a flat cellulose-based substrate in such a way as will, ultimately, result in them handing over some money. Marketing folk like to dress it up in terms of ‘building a relationship’ or ‘having a conversation’ with the customer but, hey, what do they know? As Bill Hicks once put it, they are merely “Satan’s spawn filling the world with violent garbage…”

But back to the question of how to get the attention of these very important people who, as we all know equally well, are being bombarded with up to 3,000 commercial messages every day? Great, great photography works for me, as does a beautiful piece of print but part of it is also being able to elicit the right question, particularly if that question is, “What the….?”

That’s the tactic of this four-page direct mail piece from a bank which is printed CMYK plus a special [insert bank brand here] red on coated stock and then die-cut and folded to represent the face of an over-large Motorola pager.

“Why?” you might ask. Indeed, that is the question. It is an excellent question. It is the question that the creators of this piece are hoping will become irresistible to all people who receive it, driving them to rip open the flimsy polythene enclosure and satisfy their curiosity for once and for all.

It’s a brilliant idea alright, but only brilliant with the right people. I picked it up and my first response was, “Pager? Why would I want a stupid pager?” There is no hope.

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