200+ Marketers Hear 'Print Delivers' Message

NEW YORK—Sappi Fine Paper, in partnership with The Print Council, hosted more than 200 area media and marketing specialists and publishers at the Art Directors Club here yesterday for a "Print Delivers NYC" lunch-and-learn event. The sixth such seminar in an ongoing series presented around the country by The Print Council, presentations raised awareness about the viability of print media and its effectiveness as part of cross-media communications.

Following welcome remarks by Ben Cooper, executive director of The Print Council, David Mastervich, manager of catalogs, periodicals and saturation mail at the U.S. Postal Service, discussed consumer preferences for traditional marketing channels such as printed magazines, direct mail and printed catalogs that drive buyers to Websites for ordering. He quoted a study that found the average consumer is exposed to 2,904 marketing messages daily, will pay attention to 52 and will act on/pay close attention to only four of them. Ink-on-paper messages help break through the clutter.

A successful multimedia campaign developed for Kelloggs, which incorporated print in conjunction with electronic channels and social media, was detailed by Jim Mikol, executive vice president and director of print management at Leo Burnett. Geared toward women who want to lose weight, the "Special K Challenge" resulted in a 53 percent increase in gross sales.

Mikol was followed by Julie Higgins, business development consultant at Xerox, who discussed how direct mail incorporating variable data and personalization greatly improved response rates to cross-media marketing campaigns conducted by the Maine Tourism Bureau and Kennesaw State University.

And speaker Jim Dunn, president of Heidelberg USA, pointed to the importance of quality printing reproduction and enhanced finishing techniques, such as foil stamping and embossing, to elicit a positive response from recipients.

Molly Foshay, director of creative services at Sappi Fine Paper, closed the seminar with information about paper sustainability and recycling, and laid to rest many false conceptions about print's environmental impact in comparison to electronic alternatives. Noting that direct mail/marketing materials make up only 2.4 percent of U.S. landfills, she pointed out that there are more trees growing in America today than there were 70 years ago.

Foshay added, that since more than half of the land in the United States is still privately owned, the paper industry has also played an instrumental role in making it economically attractive for land owners to keep their properties forested, rather than selling them to developers.