The battle between print and digital marketing is still going strong with some businesses being pushed to choose a side and name a winner.
Today, print and digital are seen as two opposing enemies by many media companies with the debate often entitled ‘is print dead’ becoming a popular headline as the basis of many blogs and articles from various marketing agencies.
But does it have to be this way?! While there are measurable benefits to taking marketing campaigns digital through the use of video, where your consumer is concerned, nothing quite beats the personal touch of being able to hold and interact with a piece of promotional material in your hands.
The fashion brand ASOS understand this concept perfectly. While their business model consists of predominantly digital marketing strategies such as apps and digital publications, they haven’t fully dismissed the use of printed collateral and so they send out their monthly ‘ASOS magazine’ both via app and printed format through the post so consumers have a physical copy to keep.
But for technological brands who often engage in B2B marketing, the pressure to stay ahead of the game in terms of digital innovation can put pressure on marketing collateral that demands more inventive techniques of distributing content than something as simplistic and habitual as a magazine or brochure.
Affari, being the peace restoring innovators that we are, have come up with a rather clever idea that will put a stop to this current warfare between print and digital and restore harmony to the marketing world! There is currently a gap between the two sectors that we think should be bridged.
We think that the solution to bridging this gap is printed collateral that artfully encompasses digital elements, such as video cards and digital keys. Video cards comprise of an LED screen encased in a printed brochure, offering a ‘best of both worlds’ solution that encompasses both print and digital marketing techniques. Digital keys may seem less swish compared to video cards but they are just as clever. A digital key is essentially a tiny USB that can be incorporated into any form of printed material. It can be utilised as a means to direct your audience to a company website, a video, or any other digital content and can even be encrypted for data capture use or as a part of a unique and personal campaign or service/product offering.
Your brand’s digital marketing can be as ground breaking as you set out to make it but still be presented within a printed brochure with branded art work in a physical format. This allows your audience and consumers to interact with your content in a much more interactive and engaging manner, being able to control aspects of your digital marketing by touch through controls on video cards, or by utilising the digital key on their own devices and viewing digital content at their own leisure.
For our clients, video cards have been increasingly popular through being utilised as a delivery vehicle for content marketing campaigns in attracting a small segment of new target customers, a particular and ever growing need within the increasingly competitive B2B market. The concept of viewing a promotional video that you are able to control and hold in your hands is something that has that extra ‘wow’ factor and personal touch, putting you head and shoulders above competitors who have maybe opted for a more orthodox approach to marketing.
As a digital agency, we obviously love all things within design and technology that offer new and fresh ways of displaying content. If you want to learn more about the solutions and deliverables we offer, visit Our Approach.
