Like most mornings I took the dog for a long walk in the early hours today. Summer in central Texas is hot and I try to get out with my 110-pound Great Pyrenees rescue before the heat index climbs into the triple digits. (The vet at the shelter promised he wouldn’t get above 75 pounds when my son and I brought him home last October.)
On our way through the neighborhood we came upon a moving truck and written in orange on the side was “Don’t pack the hamster and the snake in the same box.” A clever message and as I kept walking it made me think about the evolution of marketing and branding in the label printing industry.
Historically, our industry isn’t one with a long track record of marketing finesse. We’re an industry built upon the sweat equity of hardworking entrepreneurs. These passionate, self-taught pioneers carved out a package decoration niche that grew at double-digit rates throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Pressure sensitive flexo printing was king, increasingly wiping out litho-printed cut and stack marketshare in the food and beverage markets.
At the same time letterpress was having its heyday in the pharmaceutical and personal care sectors and dynasties were built upon the ability to print clear BOPP labels with unprecedented flesh tones and tactile, 15 micron screen-printed line copy. Delphax engines were installed inline on flexo and litho presses and a number of companies became serial numbering and variable information printing specialists, offering next-generation application technology at high speeds and high profits. The orders flowed in and customer loyalty was high. Commoditization wasn’t a word on anyone’s lips and converting company owners weren’t thinking about marketing, they were focused on adding more capacity because there wasn’t enough.
Times have changed. Our passionate, self-taught label printing pioneers are now manufacturing products in a mature industry that is becoming more and more commoditized. As a result, the way companies brand themselves and their products is more important than ever before. Industry suppliers and label printers need to constantly be thinking of new ways to curate their message and fine tune their marketing and business development strategies.
That’s where we often come in. LPC is best known as an industry market research firm. We’ve been doing it for a long time and as of this writing have completed more than 150 privately commissioned market research studies for industry suppliers, printed packaging converters, trade associations and trade show companies. However we also work directly with suppliers and converters to craft their message and fine tune their marketing and business development strategies. Here are some examples:
A label converter client asked for help in getting the word out about one of his company’s application niches – linerless labeling in the packaged protein space. We spoke to a number of label application companies and food packaging conglomerates and compiled an extensive editorial piece that was featured in Packaging Digest. In that particular issue our converter client’s labels (applied to the shelf-ready products) were featured on the magazine’s front cover – a home run. You can find the front page image and accompanying article here.
On the supplier side, a company approached us recently to help them expand into the narrow web market. We recommended a strategy that included surveying more than 100 U.S. label converters about their flexo production bottlenecks and digital press purchasing drivers. We surveyed companies quantitatively and carried out in-depth interviews. Key findings of the research were pitched to a prominent industry magazine and ran as a central editorial feature. The results are also being re-purposed into a Technical White Paper that our client will distribute to every converter that spends time in their booth at Labelexpo. You can see the editorial feature and find more information about this project here.
We call this area of our work Technical Marketing and Communications. And the key word there is technical. In today’s industry landscape you need marketing input from people who understand every facet of the supply chain and speak the language fluently if you’re going to effectively brand, and sell, your company’s message, products and services.
Not enough companies are doing enough with technical PR. They’re still packing their hamster in with the snake and hoping for the best. If you think your products may be better than your message, consider talking to us about ways we can help. And don’t worry about the snakes. They’re no match for my dog.