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Printed for
YOUR EYES ONLY
There’s something heart-warming
about the idea of your newspaper
calling you by name and wishing
you a merry Christmas. Just as there’s
something fun and appealing about
your evening tabloid turning into a per-
sonal lottery ticket after you’ve fin-
ished reading it.
All this – and more – is now possi-
ble thanks to a new hybrid solution
that won UK publishers DC Thomson
the Printed Innovation of the Year title
at newsawards 2016 in London earlier
this year.
Founded in 1905 and headquartered
in Dundee, Scotland, DC Thomson
is best known as the producer of The
Dundee Courier and The Sunday Post.
It is one of the UK’s leading media or-
This year’s Printed Innovation of the Year is a revolution
in a box: a digital print head enabling newspapers to
be uniquely customized to engage reader involvement.
ganizations, with a second home base
in London’s world-famous Fleet Street.
Offset quality with inkjet
DC Thomson’s printing plant in Dun-
dee installed the new hybrid system in
March 2015, enabling the production
of bespoke newspapers with individu-
alized marketing content.
“Each copy of the newspaper is dif-
ferent. We simply leave a white space
and use the digital head to print unique
content without having to swap plates,”
explains Head of Operations Guy
Forester, who runs DC Thomson’s
contract print arm, Discovery Print.
The Kodak Prosper S-Series Imprint-
ing System is based on stream technol-
ogy, which Forester describes as “pret-
ty ingenious”. Operating at full run-
ning speed of 90,000 copies per hour,
the print head consists of 2,400 tiny lit-
tle nozzles that spray one billion drops
of ink per second. It can do all the same
things as an inkjet printer, but with off-
set quality.
“The print head provides us with
the ability to produce tailored adver-
tising campaigns via uniquely printed
barcodes and coupons. It also enables
us to produce micro-promotions using
personalized text and images,” explains
Forester.
Making readers feel special
No less clever than the technology is
DC Thomson’s creative use of its com-
mercial capabilities. Group Marketing
Manager Kirsty Matthews has coordi-
nated numerous fun campaigns captur-
ing reader engagement.
The first campaign involved a unique
code added to the Saturday magazine.
If readers wanted to see if they had
won a prize, they had to buy a copy of
the Monday newspaper. This was fol-
lowed by the hugely popular ‘Merry
Christmas Loyal Customer’ campaign,
which earned The Evening Telegraph
the Scottish Press Innovation Award
for 2016.
“To create cheer on Christmas Eve,
we changed the masthead to wish read-
ers a Merry Xmas using a randomized
selection of loyal readers’ names on the
front page. The campaign created a lot
of social engagement. Our sales nor-
mally drop on Christmas Eve because
everyone is out shopping, but now we
saw a year-on-year increase of 30%,”
reveals Matthews.
Football fever
Another crowd favourite was The
Evening Telegraph’s Toy Chest com-
petition, which drove hordes of readers
to a local shopping mall to have their
uniquely printed bar codes scanned by
a road show team. After the code was
scanned, a video would appear on the
screen revealing whether the reader had
won a Toy Chest or a consolation prize
from Santa’s sack.
“We saw a 39% increase in sales that
day. Some readers even bought multi-
ple copies,” says Matthews.
Football – a topic guaranteed to grab
reader attention in the UK – has provid-
ed a great platform for giveaway cam-
paigns. In a recent promotion, read-
ers had to match their uniquely printed
copies of the newspaper with the cor-
rect scorer and the correct time in the
UEFA European Championships. “If,
say, your copy of the newspaper said
‘Ronaldo 23 minutes’, then you won a
prize if Ronaldo scored at 23 minutes,”
describes Matthews.
Matthews is brimming with fresh
ideas for using the new hybrid op-
tion, which she sees as offering bound-
less exciting commercial opportunities.
“All our campaigns so far have gener-
ated a great social media buzz and up-
lift in sales and readership.”
In addition to winning the Printed In-
novation of the Year title at newsawards
2016, DC Thomson also took home the
award for Best Regional Newspaper
Printer of the Year. The Courier was
additionally awarded as Best Region-
al Newspaper.
“It was a good night for us. We en-
tered three categories and won all
three,” concludes Forester.
Text: Silja Kudel
Photos: DC Thomson, newsawards
View DC Thomson’s
short video of the hybrid
print innovation:
watch?v=u0QCnUPwKvI
Our personalized campaigns
have generated a great
social media buzz and
uplift in sales.
UPM NEWS 8