Little black box – DPZ’s award-winning work.
Combining video content with print, and the ability to print directly onto almost any material, have become key differentiators for Surrey service provider DPZ, which won the Supreme Award at this year’s Print, Design & Marketing Awards.
In just two years, DPZ has fundamentally broadened its horizons. In 2011, it was a fairly typical small commercial printer that specialised in digital printing. Now, the Camberley-based company is actually two companies, one that is noted for innovative digitalprinting applications, and one (called AC Media) dedicated to web building and other online services.
Central to the revolution on the printing side has been a partnership with TV in a Card, which sees DPZ offer a product that combines print with, typically, a 7-inch screen showing video content, and investment in a large format Océ Arizona flatbed printer, measuring 1.25 x 2.5 metres, which it is using to print directly onto such a wide variety of materials, both flexible and rigid, that the possible applications seem almost endless.
Managing director Ali Buckman has been the man behind this process of change – one that still often needs to be communicated to customers that only think to contact DPZ when print on paper is required.
It has moved a long way beyond that point, and the video brochures are the perfect example. DPZ has created its own brand and website (www.tvbrochure.co.uk) to capitalise on this opportunity, and for the right kind of customer, it is the perfect product.
‘That side is quite exciting,’ he told Digital Printer. ‘It is early days, but much more will become known about this in the next couple of years. Already, it has been used by companies such as Ferrari and Bentley. It’s a high ticket item to sell a high ticket product. It typically lends itself to one type of client, and that’s the big blue chip companies with bigger budgets to spend. We have been lucky in taking it to some creative agencies, which put the TV brochure in front of their client and they liked it straight away.’
These are not cheap items to produce, and the run lengths, which are usually fewer than 100 units, reflect this. Depending on the volume, the video units might cost anything between £60 and £200. DPZ has the print skills to augment the video content with a printed brochure that includes special effects such as spot UV, foil blocking, and embossing/debossing, which can help to heighten the feeling of luxury.
For DPZ, the TV brochure product is an icebreaker and a door-opener, and the same can be said for its expertise with ‘direct to substrate’ printing, which sees it use its flatbed device to print on materials such as glass, wood, metal, acrylics – actually, potentially most materials that you could name. Both of these are conversation- starters that mark DPZ out as different to almost any other digital print supplier.
Mr Buckman continued: ‘Creative agencies are always looking for new ways to put marketing down onto a material. Mostly they have been limited to what we can put on paper. But when you show them the TV brochures and pieces of acrylic and wood and metal etc., the agencies get quite excited about what can be done. We have to educate them about what’s available.’
DPZ produced a piece of marketing of its own to showcase the direct to substrate capability. Its Little Black Box, an award winner at Whitmar Publications’ Print, Design & Marketing Awards this year, contained 25 different materials, ranging from typical signage substrates such as Dibond and Foamex, through to ceramic floor tiles, MDF, ply, magnetic materials and polystyrene. Some of the material was simply sourced from a local B&Q.
‘It’s our secret weapon,’ confided Mr Buckman. ‘It really gets us through doors, and it has triggered some thought from our clients in a lot of cases. One said, if we bring in 500 iPads that we want unique names on, can you do that? And yes we can do that; that’s the beauty of digital. It gives the client a lot of options when they want to create something completely bespoke.’
The technology that DPZ has allows it to print onto materials up to 48 mm thick; it has even printed onto a bedroom door. This, combined with its video in print activity, makes it easy to forget that DPZ can also handle the standard print work that every company needs. But in the competitive world of print, when you have two aces up your sleeve, you play them first.
