PrintCity Alliance already knows that you love print—now it wants to know why.

The vendors’ consortium is running an online survey that invites print fans to count (and measure) the ways they love the medium and its role in the graphic communications mix. The poll is a part of PrintCity’s LovePrint campaign, intended to raise awareness of print’s advantages among the media.

“We definitely live in an ever more complex multi-media society, but print can be a very high impact, efficient and energy effective way to reach most target audiences,” says David Stamp, the alliance’s director of marketing and communications. "One of the main aims of the PrintCity Alliance is to promote the use of print—after all, our members are involved in it in some way.

“Even more importantly, the long term aim of alliance members working together is to share knowledge, for the benefit of all,” Stamp says.

LovePrint is one of a number of things that the PrintCity Alliance is doing in preparation for drupa 2012, where its member companies will exhibit jointly in their traditional space in Hall 6 on the Messe Düsseldorf fairgrounds. At the quadrennial global event for print technology, says Stamp, the alliance will focus on three main themes: value-added printing; web printing operations; and hybrid production environments for offset and digital printing.

The LovePrint campaign can be monitored on Twitter, where the alliance’s main news feed also can be found. Followers will be invited to join a new blog aimed at identifying frequently asked questions in the print and packaging industries, Stamp says.

Based in Germany, PrintCity Alliance describes itself as a cross-industry initiative that fosters cooperation across the graphic arts value chain in ways that individual vendors, however large, can’t accomplish by themselves. Among its 36 main member companies and industry partners are technology leaders Bobst, manroland, Muller Martini, and Océ.

The alliance was formed 14 years ago in an effort to give its founding members a cooperative presence at drupa 2000. A history of PrintCity Alliance’s participation in drupa can be read here.