The Visual Media Conference takes place on 25 June 2014 at The Rose Bowl in Leeds. Organised by CDi Print Yorkshire, it is a unique event that brings together printers and other players in today’s dynamic media supply chain.

There was for many years a clear dividing line between the activities of a printing company, and those of an agency. They knew their places and they knew where demarcation began and ended. Not so in 2014.

A printing company today can be creative; it can be digital, it can design, it can lead the way. The world of marketing communications has opened up to such a company in ways that a matter of perhaps five years ago would have seemed impossible. The opportunity is there for print companies to go and grab.

This is the context for a unique conference which takes place in late June in Yorkshire, organised by CDi Print Yorkshire, the BPIF’s initiative into the integrated Creative and Digital Industries sector. The Visual Media Conference takes place on 25 June 2014 at The Rose Bowl in Leeds, and carries the strapline: ‘2020 starts tomorrow – visit the future landscape of marketing communications.’ It is very much a natural extension of last year’s Media Market Place event, which sought to connect creative, print and digital communication businesses in the same region, and was also organised by CDi.

‘It’s a direct response to Media Market Place. The feedback was that people wanted a conference focused on these kinds of content, understanding customers’ customers and their role in the supply chain,’ said Robert McClements of CDi Print Yorkshire.

‘This event is about giving context and understanding to the broad spectrum of marketing communications, and how the printer should relate to that, and integrate with that; and how he can have much more influence and more control over that, including gaining more of the overall marketing spend.’

Targeted at digital and integrated agencies, brand owners, marketers, packaging producers and supply chain partners, as well as printers, the Visual Media Conference will bring together both national and international speakers from across many different media, who will use case studies to impart information that will illustrate how dynamic a supply chain print now exists within.

 

Open for business

Highlights of the speaker programme include a live link to the HP Dscoop Grandmasters Summit in Budapest, where speakers such as Dscoop EMEA director Peter van Teeseling and Yorkshire’s own Jon Bailey, managing director of ProCo, will discuss the latest thinking, trends and technologies in digital printing. Since Dscoop is a closed shop of HP Indigo users, this represents a unique opportunity to learn from these experts.

With a print and packaging theme, Mark Eggleton of Sun Branding Solutions (formerly Gilchrist, the packaging repro company) and Cathy Barnes, Professor of Retail Innovation at the Faraday Centre for Retail Excellence, will discuss smart packaging developments, and deliver revealing insight into the emotional buttons that influence consumers’ retail buying decisions.

From the Netherlands comes Okke Zitman of Media Plaza, a multi-media collective based around a printing company that invited other media companies – photography, social media, a digital agency, app design – into its building to share in an integrated brand offering. This is truly a model for how printers and other media supply chain partners can look to work more closely together and maximise marketing spend opportunities for mutual benefit; it can be applied also to scenarios where companies do not share a building.

Also from the Netherlands is Henk Vermuelen, chief executive officer at GOC, which provides research and staff development for the Dutch creative sector. He will be introducing new, pan-European research titled ‘Media Communications in 2020’, which will be presented at the Visual Media Conference through interviews with ‘time travellers’ – characters from the future (played by actors) complete with virtual personae and even a social network presence.

Further sessions include a look at web to print with Vpress, the agency Bloom with a new ‘social influence’ tool that helps to tame Big Data, Sky AdSmart talking about targeted TV advertising, and the inside story of how Yorkshire won the chance to stage part of the Tour de France.

Summing up what printers can hope to gain from the conference, Robert McClements said: ‘Printers will be able to take with them knowledge based on real case studies that show innovation, show what’s possible from a technical point of view, and more importantly show where it fits within the spectrum of marketing communications. Ultimately they should be able to grow the proportion of marketers’ spend that they can influence and gain for their businesses.’