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About the Digital Printing Forum

DigitaldruckForum [Digital Printing Forum]: Active market development and inter-sectoral know-how transfer

About the DigitaldruckForum (DDF)

The DigitaldruckForum (DDF), located in Gutenberg town Mainz, is an independent organization and industry initiative to discuss and promote “Digital Printing and Interactive Marketing with Print Media”. DDF with her Partners like www.pdfzone.de, PPM Graphic Industries and Produktioner-Club e.V. reaches interest groups in the German speaking countries. The Portal http:/www.digitaldruck-forum.org is visited more then thousand times a month and has round 6000 subscribers in the German Speaking area.

The DigitaldruckForum cooperates with for example Messe Düsseldorf/Drupa 2004, with the GWA Association of creative Agencies, with enterprises like Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, Man Roland, Nexpress, Scitex Digital Printing and others.

The DigitaldruckForum will held in October 2003 to industry key events: The 1. DDF Congress “Production initiates Creativity” and the DDF Industry Symposium “ Digital Printing” cover Technology, Business and Market requirements. A keynote speaker is a Europeen Famous Communication Specialist: Sebastian Turner, ADC chairman of the executive board and CEO of Scholz&Friends AG.

Introductory remark

It was in 1995 that the DigitaldruckForum (DDF - Digital Printing Forum) constituted itself at CeBIT under the chairmanship of Andreas Weber as an independent committee whose members were mainly users of digital printing applications. The aim and the guiding idea was to support users in the early phases of this new printing technology in order to establish digital printing on the market as a new basis for communication services. Important basic material was elaborated for this purpose, in order to

• Illustrate the significance of digital printing for print media production,
• Offer marketing ideas for digital printing (including marketing tools),
• Compile and disseminate basic information and publications,
• Formulate user interests in relation to technology development.

Several hundred digital printing pioneers use the Forum – the regular meetings have met with a lively response as an opportunity for exchanging information with colleagues, discussing tech-nical problems and formulating market prospects. An intranet and a website provide information on every aspect of digital printing and the thousands of interested professionals from advertising and industry who have accessed the site confirm that the Forum is on the right track.

Getting better all the time

The DigitaldruckForum is being fundamentally repositioned in 2002 and expanded to the largest online community in Europe focused on “interactive marketing with print media”. The goal is to cater to the growing importance of digital printing and its market potential. This repositioning is necessary because:

• The digitisation of communication requires new, networked strategies and partnerships,
• The importance of print media in the marketing mix is changing,
• The communication industry may have recognised the technical advantages of digital printing, but it is not in a position, for a variety of reasons, to communicate the technical advantages and customer benefits.

At the same time, the value of (personalised) printed information – particularly in competition with electronic media – must be made clearer in order to avoid disadvantages.

It is conceivable that, following after a successful launch in 2002, the activities will be expanded on an international basis for drupa 2004 outside the german speaking countries like Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

Upheaval in the market

The communication market is in a state of upheaval. Print service providers, media companies and advertising agencies need to realign themselves in the dialogue between businesses and their customers. There is a need for interactive marketing, dialogue-oriented communication strategies and real-time information transfer. For all concerned – address suppliers, print and publishing service providers and their clients – this means becoming more flexible, finding efficient solu-tions and working on the permanent optimisation of established communication processes. One new aspect is that digital printers, acting in their capacity as consultants, must be in a position to actively sell their innovative services and communicate the customer benefits.

In this situation, the DigitaldruckForum becomes a successful platform for securing the necessary transfer of know-how between brands/companies, the advertising sector and the media, as well as the print service providers and technology developers.

Stormy weather ahead

Being a technology-dependent, innovative sector, the printing industry has successfully survived many structural changes in the past, but it has never faced such radical upheaval as at present:

1. The advertising industry (which directly or indirectly finances 90% of print production in Europe) is battling with dwindling advertising budgets. In terms of media spending, print advertising, in particular, is declining at double-digit rates (newspaper -10.9% and trade journals -15.9%; source AC Nielsen, 2002; reference period: 2001 vs. 2000).
2. At the same time, there is a threat of massive reallocation of communication budgets, as funds are to be invested in eCRM/online and direct marketing, rather than in printed matter.
3. Surveys of the German Printers Association BVDM recorded the worst estimation of the market among its members since the critical year 1993 (43% consider their current situation to be poor and only 6% good!). In addition, according to printing industry estimates, both the web offset and the sheet-fed offset segments are currently being hit by more than 30% excess capacity in the field of conventional mass-produced printed matter.
4. A study by AOL Time Warner, the world's largest media corporation, indicates that the ratio of print media to total media utilisation will slump by one-third by the year 2015 (decline from von 16% in 1995 to 11% in 2015).

The question is: Does this gloomy picture of the situation reflect the available options and what is actually feasible?

The answer is: NO! If the printing industry soon realises that it needs to address the following problem areas!

The communication and marketing sector must start to act

The following points indicate that there is an urgent need for action that requires support at an interdisciplinary level.

1. There is little demand for innovations: Printing businesses and the printing industry's customers (mainly advertising agencies) are insufficiently informed or totally unaware of the capabilities and benefits offered by the latest digital print media technologies.
2. Irrationality puts on pressure: Communication must adapt flexibly to the incalculability of the markets and the associated ad-hoc decisions.
3. Efficiency is trumps: The rule for corporate communication projects is: half the cost, twice the efficiency! As a marketing instrument, print media must serve this target.
4. The printing industry communicates wrongly, or not at all: There is no dialogue between customer, print service provider and cooperation partners that could generate added value and additional benefits.
5. From mass communication to massive personalised communication: In the future, new technical solutions must permit personalised communication in the print media sector.
6. Communication is going interactive: New, dialogue and response-oriented information channels are developing in the interplay between companies, customers, advertising providers and media enterprises.
7. Process optimisation alone is not enough: Service providers must get networked and learn to think in terms of networks
8. Reorientation – From printer to service provider: Service providers in the printing industry must realise that what their customers have is not a "printing problem", but a communication problem. This results in an inevitable necessity for repositioning and gearing their core business to consulting.

No one can make it alone

The DigitaldruckForum sees itself as a top-level, impartial organisation whose aim is to help find a rapid solution to the above problems by establishing cooperation projects.

The partners are:

• Pdfzone.de (leading community for pdf users)
• Print & Media Forum AG (events)
• GWA Gesamtverband Werbeagenturen (German Advertising Association with its print production executive group)
• Produktioner-Club
• AOL Interactive Marketing Group
• Print & Produktion (production media partner)
• HORIZONT (leading newspaper for the communication industry)
• Wertvolle-Kommunikation.net (leading community for brand management)
• Technology manufacturers (print and workflow management,) like
• Heidelberg/Nepress
• MAN Roland
• Scitex Digital Printing
• Messe Düsseldorf | drupa 2004

Organisation

The DigitaldruckForum is organised by Andreas Weber Global Communication GmbH, Mainz, including activity planning and updating of the website. Management responsibility lies with Andreas Weber. Professional support is provided by a highly qualified team made up of Andreas Weber along with Rüdiger Maass as an experienced professional editor and Düsseldorf-based author, consultant, IT and PDF expert Thomas Müller. Management and team cooperate closely with the DigitaldruckForum Advisory Board, whose members are top-level representatives of the cooperation partners.

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