Last week’s Cross Media 2012 in London attracted visitors from all corners of the print, publishing and marketing sectors to its inaugural event. Organiser Informa Exhibitions said visitor numbers were over 2500, of which 59% were marketers, 28% print professionals and 13% publishers.

Incorporating Informa’s recently acquired event, mediaPro, Cross Media was aimed at businesses that wish to discover how cross-platform campaigns can improve ROI and help them recognise the commercial possibilities and opportunities that are available in the fast evolving marketing mix. There were more than 70 exhibitors from the marketing, creative, printing and publishing sectors.

The six specialised theatres – covering cross media, digital and direct marketing, print and innovation and publishing strategies – held over 60 seminars with 78 high-level speakers from different facets of the communications industry. The speaker line-up included presenters from Crew Clothing, Tesco, BBC Worldwide, Royal Mail, Microsoft, Sony, Adobe, Pensord and Advanstar.

‘We are extremely pleased with the reaction from visitors to our rich content programme. With most theatres, the queues before each session resulted in a limited amount of standing-room only available before it even kicked off, and on a number of occasions even that was filled pretty quickly!’ said Nick Craig Waller, event director of Cross Media 2012.

Antony White, European & UK Product business developer (solutions) for Canon Europe, said: ‘Considering that this was the first time that the Cross Media Show has been held, the quality of visitors was impressively high. The response to Canon’s cross media proposition was very positive, with visitors keen to explore new concepts and initiatives to deliver the most effective integrated campaigns with Canon’s help.

John Davies, software business strategy manage for Fujifilm Europe, said: ‘We had the opportunity to demonstrate how our brand-new XMF ColorPath colour management solution can be easily and successfully integrated within different print environments to run successful campaigns.’

Douglas Gibson, managing director of ISL, used te show to launch te new Catfish web to print system. ‘Our stand has been really busy over the two days, and I am pleased with the number of decision makers we met,’ he said. ‘In addition, Cross Media attracted a broad audience of print and marketing professionals, which created the opportunity for us to meet with a number of potential new prospects – something we wouldn’t have been able to do in two days otherwise!’

Mark Hinder, production print market development manager for Konica Minolta Business Solutions, said: ‘We had a great deal of interest from organisations wanting to understand how our exclusive business development programme can support the development of their cross-media marketing strategies and support their investments, so for Konica Minolta, this was a very successful show.’

Clive Martin, Kern’s strategic business manager, said: ‘We’re delighted to have been invited onto Konica Minolta’s stand at Cross Media. It was a great opportunity to show how easy it is to integrate the PageMailer with printer vendors and software products with great results.’

‘Cross Media 2012 completely exceeded my expectations! The Business Design is a great venue, especially when it has the vibe and buzz I’ve seen during Cross Media 2012,’ said Tony Hodgson, director of PODi for Europe: ‘The event has definitely raised awareness of cross media and shows huge promise for the future, while the presentations and panel discussions in the seminar theatre offered fantastic content to visitors.’

John Murphy, managing director of ROI360, said: ‘The response we had to our stand by far exceeded our expectations. We received three times the amount of leads we had initially forecasted for the event. The imaginative and engaging event, coupled with such a great venue, means that there is a strong platform for Cross Media 2012 to continue to grow, and to go on addressing the importance of cross media across the print and marketing industries.’

Nick Craig Waller concluded: ‘We are extremely pleased with the outcome of our inaugural event. For marketers, creatives and publishers, Cross Media 2012 provided the ideal platform to view the latest technologies, solutions and applications they need to execute their cross media campaigns. In addition, print service providers were able to hear case studies and panel discussions about diversifying their offering to marketing service providers. Judging by the fantastic attendance of all these seminars and initial feedback from exhibitors, these topics clearly hit the mark and we will continue to build on this for Cross Media 2013 and its extension into Ipex 2014.’

Next year’s Cross Media 2013 will take place from 23-24 October 2013 at the Business Design Centre in Islington, London.

Contact: www.informa.com