Norfolk print company Barnwell Print is trialling Clickable Paper, a technology that links printed to digital content in more sophisticated ways than QR codes.

Julian Barnwell, managing director of Barnwell Print in Norfolk, has had a lot of experience with QR codes in the past, and it is with some authority that he describes Ricoh’s Clickable Paper technology as ‘like QR codes on steroids’.

‘QR codes were great but they were never used to their full potential,’ he explained. ‘Because they were free, most companies just took consumers straight to a website. When we saw Ricoh’s Clickable Paper solution last year, we immediately recognised its enormous potential. It is a far more intelligent and dynamic product than QR technology and moves the interactivity proposition on several steps from QR codes. 

Effectively, Clickable Paper enables publications to be used as a portal to direct readers to all kinds of extra information or entertainment.’

At the time of writing, Barnwell Print is the only UK print service provider with access to Clickable Paper, as the technology is still being trialled, but its customers are keen to utilise it more. It allows up to six multimedia links to be created from a printed page.

Smartphone users with the Clickable Paper app then hover their device above the printed content, click, and are taken to new areas of content – video, websites, social media feeds, competitions, and online purchase sites for example. Local advertisers in Norfolk have been the first to make use of the technology, through the publications of Barnwell Print’s customer, independent publisher Just Regional, which reaches 40,000 homes each month.

One such advertiser was The Theatre Royal in Norwich, whose marketing director Mark Hazell said: ‘It has given us the opportunity to get closer to our customers and potential customers by being able to offer them much more information and content than traditional magazineadvertising, as well as track the uptake and behaviour online, giving us a much greater ROI on our advertising spend. It’s a great interaction between print and online.’

According to Julian Barnwell, this is a common feeling among the advertisers that have tried Clickable Paper, and he is looking ahead to the successful completion of the trial, when the technology will come into more widespread use. Ricoh’s Gareth Parker said the company has ‘sound expectations’ to make it more widely available between January and March 2014.

‘The statistics back up that the readers are using this,’ Mr Barnwell continued. ‘It is working. You can also edit the multi-media links post-printing. It’s not locked into the page, it’s all in the cloud. We are raring to go with it, and we have seen some brilliant markets for us to exploit.’

However, Clickable Paper is only one aspect to Barnwell Print’s digital offering, as it looks to extend its expertise beyond the traditional printed page – expertise which it has had since the year 1840. In 2013, the company also began to offer an iPad publishing service to its customers, following a period of research into what the ideal digital solution would be. Mr Barnwell said that a number of alternatives were considered, but that these were somewhat clumsy and failed to clearly convey to the reader that there were interactive elements beneath parts of the content. Eventually the company settled on an iPad publishing solution from a specialist provider that it is now licenced to use.

The system resizes the publication for smartphone and tablet, iOS and Android. It delivers the smooth page turning look of a traditional magazine, and tap zones can be located on areas of the content to give the reader an indication that there is more information or rich media behind the content.

‘It is another service that allows printers to keep their customers,’ said Mr Barnwell. ‘This is about added value for the customers. Print is a powerful tool still, but so is the tablet and the smart phone, and if you can offer all of these to customers that’s great.’

The hope and expectation is that these digital services will continue to gather more momentum as Barnwell Print rolls them out to the market. The company is still very much  a printer, as is evidenced by its name, but times move on and Barnwell is moving with them.