… another print trade show turns up.
With all of the discussion about how many trade shows we really need in the printing industry and whether they need to be held annually, a consolidation theme that has been on the table for some time, a new printing trade show pops up at Messe Dusseldorf, home of drupa.
According to the press release, digi:media is planned as an annual event starting in 2011, will be an integral part of drupa in 2012 (May 3 - 16) and as of 2013 (April 11 - 13) will be held again as a separate event.” The release also states that digital printing has opened “up new target groups for print communication.” What the release does not say is that this show is targeted at German-speaking attendees, although it would like to attract vendors worldwide, and of course, vendor materials will likely also be available in English.
It will be interesting to see what type of vendor and attendee support there is for this European show. It sounds very similar to the On Demand model in the U.S. Last year, from my perspective, On Demand brought to mind the dying days of Seybold. Perhaps with some level of economic recovery on the horizon, On Demand will regain a level of energy and enthusiasm, but with the stark shift at Graph Expo to digital technologies, and the exit of key exhibitors on the offset side, at least for 2010, one wonders why we need two U.S. printing shows. Perhaps the climate is different in Europe.
The messaging for this new venture at Messe Dusseldorf seems to me to be very print centric. Wouldn’t it have been better to focus this event, if indeed it is even needed, on multichannel communications, making it a platform for discussions between the marketing/agency community and the print community to help establish and better define the new role of print in the marketing mix of today and over the next few years, as well as to educate printers on how to blend alternative media into their service offerings?
Maybe that is the intent, but the language of the release still emphasizes print and does not seem to have the right kind of messaging to draw in the all-important marketing/advertising community, who all-too-often have little print domain expertise or interest in print, and may not even be considering print as part of the picture anymore as they move more budget to alternative media. If they do wish to include print in the mix, it often becomes a commodity part of the project, offloaded to procurement who is tasked with getting the best price per piece.
The challenge for print service providers or marketing services providers, or whatever we are calling ourselves today, is to engage with marketers and agency folks much earlier in the value chain, and that is difficult to do leading with a print message.
April of 2011 will be upon us before we know it … but there is still time to adjust the messaging to achieve the results I am sure the Messe Dusseldorf team wants to achieve and to engage the marketing/advertising community in the dialog.
What do you think? Is this an event you would attend as a visitor or exhibitor? I guess we will find out in 2011 … meanwhile, WhatTheyThink will be contacting the Messe Dusseldorf team to gain more clarity about their intent for this new event. Stay tuned.
Discussion
By Monika Kissing on Feb 25, 2010
We did extensive research before we decided to introduce a new trade show for the field of digital media. After working on the concept for digi:media for more than a year and fine-tuning it with several market partners here and abroad, we have now decided to organize this event. It is evident that the extremely fast-moving digital media market demands an annual trade show. In the past few years, digital printing has developed a dynamic that is delivering important impulses to the digital publishing industry, and is also setting interesting accents in the packaging industry. So much for the demands created by the technological situation; on the other side we have the operators and users of this technology—investment decision-makers, marketers, advertisers, service providers etc. Bringing these various target groups together, addressing their market needs and offering them a platform is the goal of digi:media. The trade show is intended to create a content-technology-business synergy.
There are, without a doubt, already many events for digital or multichannel publishing. But that is exactly where the problem lies: Each of these only reaches a partial target group and never covers the entire spectrum, and this certainly not on an international level. Contrary to the numerous other events, digi:media reflects the entire gamut of themes associated with digital communication. And precisely for this reason, technology is not the sole or primary focus of digi:media. Instead, it is about the entire field of digital publishing, the cross-medial preparation of content, and the important current topic of media convergence.
One additional note regarding visitor marketing: It goes without saying that digi:media is naturally conceived as an international trade show. In the first stage, however, we are concentrating exclusively on marketing to the German-speaking visitor. Specifically, this means that we are contacting potential visitors from Germany, Austria and Switzerland, as well as the Benelux and to some extent Poland and the Czech Republic. Incidentally, the drupacube at the last drupa also began with solely German-speaking acquisition and was nonetheless a huge success.
By MIchael J on Feb 25, 2010
Cary,
I look forward to learning more about this new show, although I am "ELD" European Language Disabled so I'll probably have to depend on Google translate to keep up with what's going on.
Two data points I wanted to share.
Pediapress.org who is delivering Google Books in print on demand Niiu who launched personal newspapers, with content pulled from the web and delivered overnight for a 2 Euro /per issue subscription are both in Germany. From my point of view these are two of the most interesting digital print applications I've seen.
The other point is that I have to disagree with the idea that
"The challenge for print service providers or marketing services providers, or whatever we are calling ourselves today, is to engage with marketers and agency folks much earlier in the value chain, and that is difficult to do leading with a print message."
Instead I think it makes most sense to focus on Print centric innovation that creates new value. Sometimes that value is for marketers. But the much more interesting to me and I think larger opportunities is to produce print products that are valued by the people who purchase them.
Discussion
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