Navigating Print Campaigns: from Budgets to Paper Selection

The vision

At the cornerstone of any marketing campaign is, of course, your marketing manager. Print is likely to be leveraged alongside a range of channels, and a clear set of deliverables needs to be defined.

Production and delivery

The nuts and bolts of the print production process are handled by the production manager, who is responsible for the seamless delivery of the end product and needs to be in touch with the market, solutions and suppliers.

Think Publishing production director Justin Masters explains:

The creatives

The creative team – charged with producing relevant, visually appealing content – will include the likes of copywriters, art directors and photographers.

Yorgo Tloupas is the award-winning creative director at multidisciplinary Paris studio Yorgo&Co. In his experience, with print campaigns, “You monopolise the talent of dozens of people. The whole thing requires planning and logistics – and success is dependent on everyone working together.”

Álvaro García Barbero is president of NEOBIS and CEO of leading Spanish printers Gráficas AGA. For him, nothing works without a good copywriter creating great copy. “I want to print something great,” he says. “But if the copy is not good, we have a problem.”

According to Matt Jolly, client cervices manager at strategic marketing consultancy and marketing performance partner Go Inspire Solutions, “You can use the best quality printers in the world, but if it’s not very well designed, it won’t look like a good product. Then you can add the best designer in the world, but if they haven’t got very good photography or words to work with, then it’s not going to look like a good product. The creative side is key to making sure that the message that the brand is trying to sell is effectively conveyed.”

“Art direction [design] is applying art to commerce in a way that means solving client problems,” says Tloupas. “My job is primarily to be faced with constraints that are not of my choice and to solve those problems. They can be aesthetic problems, financial problems, anything. I do the job of the doctor.”

“My job is to understand the market – any volatilities and the direction it is going in – so I can make recommendations,” says Masters. “I need to know, for example, how and why recycled paper prices may be increasing disproportionately to mechanical grades. And I need to stick with available grades that fit a certain profile.”

Then you need to make the most of your format options – what is the scope for choosing a different paper grammage or paper size? Do you want to use a paper with higher bulk to increase the ‘thud effect’ of your print piece? What’s the most efficient size and pagination?

Wrapping and postage

Another major budgetary consideration for many print campaigns is distribution – how will you get your campaign print into the hands of your customers and prospects? And what will it cost?

“The overall size of, say, a magazine going out into the post is really important,” says Masters. “Because postage rates tend to be bracketed – meaning each product will need to be within certain brackets. And you don’t just need to consider the weight of the print piece, but any inserts or supplements, too – plus packaging. If you end up falling outside a specific bracket that you have planned for, you could be spending huge amounts extra.”

Copy and design

The costs of creative work, including any freelancers, photography and maybe travel, will also need to be accounted for.

“Good photographers take good pictures,” says Tloupas. “Good models look good, and good layouts look good. But where you should conduct any shoot? Location is always important.”

Project management

Careful budgeting and analysis at every stage will help ensure the print process runs smoothly – not least because changes can become more expensive the further along you are.

And never underestimate the (monetary) value of good communication – within your print marketing team – alongside great supplier contacts.

“I need to buy paper efficiently, effectively and economically – and to have a good rapport and relationship with everyone in my supply chain,” Masters says. “I have to know exactly what I need, and to be proactive at all stages. I undertake continuous conversations with the likes of paper merchants, paper mills and printers – so that expectations can always be kept in check.”

Everything taken together will help ensure that any print campaign delivers for the marketing budget bottom line, too.

For Tloupas, customers will establish an emotional connection with the right paper. “People get attached to paper the same way they get attached to clothes,” he says. “Nylon doesn’t feel the same as mohair.”

“Luxury brands will want a more voluminous and substantial paper, one that feels special and has a tactile quality,” says Aktas. “Automotive brands will need a whiteness to the paper, so the silver of the images stands out. While holiday companies will be looking for a paper that makes pictures of the sun, sky, and sea jump from the page. The paper needs to offer an experience for the end user.”

“The same image can look different according to the paper,” says Barbero. “For a cosmetic brand, for example, this is important. We will colour-proof the pages, so the customer knows exactly how it will look.”

“We also look at the pagination and the paper weights – and work out how to make it look as substantial as possible,” says Masters. “We often do plain white dummies, and everyone pores over them and rubs them with their fingers. We try to find the sweet spot that ticks all the boxes.”

Is it sustainable?

“It’s really important that the environmental credentials stack up,” says Masters. “It’s an almost unspoken rule that paper should be FSC- or PEFC-certified.”