#Think!Paper — Edition 3, Vol. 3
Interview by Andreas Weber, Head of Value
It’s always a great pleasure to meet Jeroen van Druenen (fun included!). By chance you will meet him anyway: in Portugal, UK, Poland, the USA, Australia, Hongkong,.. and also sometimes (!) in Amsterdam. Haha! However in any case you will have a great conversation. There are not a lot like him around the globe. So read carefully what he has to tell us!
What is the beauty of print in the digital age?
Jeroen van Druenen: The beauty of print… The start of a good conversation. The attention prints get instead of an email. You see it happen every day. — According to Erik B. Nordstrom (Co-President Nordstrom), their results were in part hurt by their decision to stop using printed direct mail to reach its customer for their loyalty program.
Even tech companies like Google and Facebook use print to communicate with their audience nowadays.
It’s there when you have time, it’s on your coffee table, ready to use. In DM we see (much) more ROI, and when it’s tailored and personalized the ROI will dramatically get higher.
And, yes, it’s more expensive than for example email but with much more revenues. And to be very clear, I am not against email, we embrace the digital age. We use it in a multi-channel way. We can automate a reaction on a personalized webpage to start a print job and vice versa. It’s not do this and don’t do that. No, it’s usage of every channel in every way.
Everything in the Mobile Age is so fast. Why is the adaption of digital printing technology innovations so slow?
Jeroen van Druenen: Our industry has more fights.
- Our industry is not sexy.
- Our business partners are not digital savvys or they don’t understand the power of “personalized” print.
- We need to educate our customers with more case studies, success cases etc.
- We need to show that print in any form is sustainable and that we don’t pollute our environment.
What are the key drivers for a powerful & successful print service biz today and what will it be in the future?
Jeroen van Druenen: Key drivers to have a successful and profitable print service biz today are in my opinion the offering of multi-channel communications. By all means, printing as a service can be done everywhere. But adding value to paper is something different. Getting the right message for the right customer. Be relevant to them. Adding response mechanism to paper (purls/QR/AR etc.). And if you are relevant for the end customer it will be profitable for your customer and for your own company. So knowledge of marketing, knowledge of databases, knowledge how to get the information you want to use out of these databases, concepting, copy, design of all different channels etc.etc. And, yes, not every expertise is inside your company, so partner up with specialists to work together and built a strong relation with your customer.
Thank you very much for the great conversation!
About
Good friends for many years: Jeroen van Druenen, Jacob Aizikowitz, former President of XMPie, Andreas Weber. Photo: Jannie van Druenen.
Jeroen van Druenen, CEO @ Jubels — print and more. Based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. A privately held marketing communication service provider and printing company. With more than 25 years of experience in the Graphic Arts and Communications industry Jubels offers customers effective, on demand, integrated crossmedia communications.
Specialties: 1:1 marketing, crossmedia campaigns, printing – offset & digital, fulfillment activities, web to print applications, personalized url’s & images.
Jeroen van Druenen is also President of the XMPie Users Group and Board Member of the global Xerox Premier Partner network. And at least as one of the active members of the Think!Paper initiative, he is always giving great advice to all of us.
#Think!Paper — the key facts at a glance
What we do
We evaluate and profile print and its proponents as an effective driving force for transformation – across all industries!
Our mission
We show, first and foremost, that print is by no means driftwood in an ocean of transformation (with Titanic-style effects) but rather a solid anchor for the ‘tsunamis in our heads’!
Our USP
- We are bringing together the brightest minds to form interdisciplinary #Think!Teams with a global outlook.
- We are building up the finest pool of expertise with a clear focus on interaction, discourse, customer experience and sustainable conversations.
- We are reinforcing the bedrock of any successful ‘digital’ transformation – proficient, dynamic and meaningful communication.
Benefits for our partners
We help our partners make new and market-relevant discoveries that inspire them and inject new energy into their development.