VDP: what's its role in wide-format?

The participants:

Robert Munro 
Bezier

Bryan Shirley 
Bluetree

Phill Reynolds
Cestrian

Donna Brown
OgilvyOne

Mateo Rigamonti
pixart.it   

Gary Peeling
Precision Printing

Also present at the event were:

Host/journalist: Lesley Simpson, editor, Image Reports
Chair: Sophie Matthews-Paul, technology editor, Image Reports
HP representatives:
Nancy Janes, UK&I large format country manager
Mila Tselibeeva, UK&I business development manager, HP Sign and Display,
Eitan Abramovich, R&D (Israel)

VDP has enormous potential in wide-format, but it's a potential that is nowhere near being fully realised. Why? We asked a group of print chiefs - plus the head of offline production at agency OgilvyOne - to give their insights as to why the offering, so well established in small-format, is dragging its heels in the large-format space. And, naturally, the discussion turned to how VDP might evolve over the coming months and years.

The fact that the opening part of the debate focussed on the term 'VDP' and what it means - or, more importantly, what it's perceived to mean - says a lot about why the market is still so nervous about adopting it. VDP is quite simply variable data print. That variable data can be text, images, barcodes etc., opening a realm of possibilities within wide-format for many different types of versioning across all sorts of markets. But that's not the general perception. Think VDP, think direct mail. The two are synonymous to too many, a mindset that is holding back its development in wide-format - a relatively new space for VDP.

"It's important to understand how to present VDP," said Gary Peeling of Precision Printing, whose company undertakes both large- and small-format variable data jobs. "The terminology we use and how we market the service is crucial. For many, VDP refers to one-to-one marketing, to personalisation. In wide-format that doesn't correlate. Client's immediately think 'we're not going to be doing posters on a one-to-one basis'. So we're having to change the way we talk about VDP. The terminology we use is 'contextual print communication'. We talk to the client about using the service to get to different print communities, rather than one-to-one marketing - e.g. running billboard posters in different areas with targeted content."

Bryan Shirley of Rob Munro said that at Bezier, "We talk about 'variable data publishing' as part of a wider medium/solutions package. The term VDP is a little restrictive as it goes further than just print, including links to other mediums like HTML email, microsites, SMS. The key is to offer retail marketing, not just print."
Donna Brown, head of offline production at agency OgilvyOne, acknowledged the problem. "When I knew I was coming to this discussion I asked various people within the agency what they thought VDP was - what it could deliver. Everybody said direct mail. When people hear the term VDP it's whole capability, especially within wide-format, is not what people think of."

Better education is the solution to that, not a change in terminology according to pixart.it founder and CEO Matteo Rigamonti. "I think VDP is the correct term. Variable data print is exactly what the offering is - the ability to change text and pictures. If you start looking for a new term to describe the same thing you are making things unnecessarily complicated. We just have to do a better job at explaining what VDP is."

The argument struck a chord with Brown. "At agencies we probably don't tell clients as much about what can be done as printers probably think we do. Once upon a time production people in agencies had lots of time to research what could be achieved with the technology available. We just don't get to do that now so we need more information to be fed up to us. We need to know what can be achieved at the production and creative levels.

Who's driving VDP growth?
"It's our responsibility as printers to put VDP in front of clients and tell them all they need to know about how it can help them achieve their goals," said Shirley. Sounds simple, but the panel agreed that the growth of VDP within wide-format would be anything but. "The most difficult part of business is to create demand. You have to create a desire that the customer will buy into. You might work extremely hard not to see results for six months," pointed out Rigamonti to much head nodding around the table.

"It's tricky because print and display are old mediums and nowadays when ad. managers and agencies are putting together campaigns there are certain tick boxes and they don't really see more than those. They see print as just one box. They have learned all about new electronic media and how that can impact upon their messaging - and they're focussed on that. But they know little about how print has developed and how the likes of VDP can help them. The most successful applications are the ones being driven by the agencies because they're driving the creativity of campaigns. We need to create 'Print 2.0' to be able to get in and explain to them how far we've come," argued Peeling.

OgilvyOne's Brown agreed that there's something of a hole in the communication process between the printer, creatives and procurers. "What we really need to do is hold innovation forums where we get everyone together from all levels so that we become aware of what we can achieve with the likes of VDP, so we can then go away and think about how to use it.

"The problem with VDP in particular is that it took years for people to really start using it in small-format, and even then it often wasn't used very creatively. That education process needs to be speeded up if VDP is going to really grow within wide-format. You might think that within agencies, the lessons have already been learned, but that's unlikely to be the case as those responsible for small-format direct mail are unlikely to be the ones dealing with large-format. There are so many different people involved that you might find you have to start the education process all over again. And people see other process taking over from print so you need to act fast."

Peeling takes up that chain of thought: "The growth of electronic display over physical print is obvious. The key to VDP growth is making sure that clients understand that print can be data driven or they're going to have us hanged, drawn and quartered." 

Getting that message up the chain to those holding the purse strings is admittedly a difficult task, and one which might easily deter the smaller print companies from embarking upon VDP. "The real cost of going the VDP route is the cost of the sales and marketing effort," said Bluetree's Shirley. "I think the growth potential for VDP in wide-format is massive and we're just getting started. But how does a small company like ours take full advantage when you consider the cost of how we restructure to get it in front of the right people?"

As if getting through to the right marketing/creative people within agencies and direct clients isn't difficult enough, convincing the person responsible for signing off the cash (often in another department entirely) that VDP is a good return on investment is an even harder ask. "The thing is, even if we can see that there's an argument for using VDP in wide-format print, all procurement people want to see is how the figures stack up. People might talk of a great ROI, but where are the stats we can show to prove it?" asked Brown.

Cost model
Speaking of figures, the charging structure for VDP within wide-format became a hot topic of debate at meeting. "On the few VDP jobs that we've done so far we've built in a one-off charge, but that's probably our naivety. What is the charging model?" asked Shirley.

"You just don't charge for it. It's just the next development in print services and just something you have to do," said Reynolds, to the incredulity of some of the others around the table.

"VDP is a service and one that should be paid for," said Munro. "When we were novices (handling small-format VDP) we would try and add 20 - 30p per sheet. But then you start managing and even creating databases and that costing changes. I don't think there's really a charging model that fits all - it's an ongoing dialogue with each client but we charge for data manipulation and cleansing, as well as for any Web and marketing analytics to assess and improve value."

"We certainly charge too," added Peeling. "We charge at an hourly rate that is comparable to the pre-press operator's time spent on handling the job - including the time spent making checks. It means you can make a high labour charge at the front-end of the job. No doubt we'll end up giving it away at some point but let's not start out that way. We are saving somebody multi-origination costs and they're using our expertise. We can make money from that."

Data responsibilities
Who's responsible for the data has always been the big question hanging over VDP. As Munro sees it "unfortunately, ensuring data is fit for purpose is very often the major part of any VDP job and there's a huge responsibility attached to that. It's key to work in partnership with the majority of clients' internal IT and marketing staff as databases are frequently out of date and inconsistent and need additional input for cleansing, suppression, de-duplication, formatting and mail sorting.

"We have teams of programmers and have built up our own solution to handle all the data processing required at our end of the process. The only new people we employed last year were system analysts. It's all about making life easy for the client. If it's a headache, they'll say 'oh let's not bother'."

Peeling is of the same belief: "I think pretty early on with VDP you realise you need a data processing capability in-house at the printer. Agencies and end clients often don't have the facility to provide print-ready data so you have to be able to deal with what gets thrown at you."

Data protection issues and the level of involvement needed to provide this type of data handling worried some of the VDP newcomers around the table. "On the jobs we've done so far we've had the data come through in Excel files so it's been very simple. I'd like to keep it that way," said Shirley, to nods from Reynolds who added: "You have enough trouble getting people to get you just one artwork/text change!"

Software and workflow
It's still very early days for VDP software tailored to the wide-format market. HP has just brought out the SmartStream Designer 4.0 Adobe InDesign plug-in but offerings are fairly thin on the ground so the Round Table participants were asked about how great a part developments would play in how they handle VDP: would they prefer to have VDP options as an integrated part of existing software, as in the Rip, or as an independent program or plug-in?

For pixart.it's there was no question that plug-ins are the way forward. "We have numerous printers and we don't want to have to start getting different software and Rips," said Rigamonti.

It's a tack many of the others agreed upon. "It's to everyone's benefit to have a low maintenance solution for producing VDP," said Munro. "It becomes expensive and difficult to maintain and develop bespoke solutions (although for some clients we have to as we need to link with their back-office software). We prefer to have an independent program or plug-in that lets us check pages off-line before print commences."

"If you could Rip on the fly on the printer that would be the most time saving," argued Reynolds, opening up a debate about where you are best accepting the 'bottleneck' that's bound to come with VDP. The outcome - most of those around the table would rather deal with the issue before the printer to optimise the machine's up-time.

The topic of logistics rounded off the session, with questions over the value of data (such as barcodes) being used outside the print area of a VDP job to aid delivery etc. While the sophistication of in-house, automated tracking facilities at the likes of pixart.it means it may not have a massive added benefit in every scenario, the general feeling was that it would play an important part in the longer-term adoption of wide-format VDP.


Where does wide-format VDP go from here?
Robert Munro 
I'm extremely optimistic. VDP is like print renewed - it gives the medium a new role and a new marketability. The real value of VDP is in the preparation of the data and we have to ensure that we have systems in place to check that is all correct before composition so we can provide multi-channel delivery, tracking and analytics. We have to be able to show the market that it is more creative and efficient than the alternatives.

Bryan Shirley 
We're very optimistic about VDP and we're preparing to take more on board. Now we have to come up with ideas to create the spark that ignites customer demand. Also, some of our older sales staff need to embrace it more - so I need to excite them about it. We are just about to get a business development manager whose role it will be to 'sell' new services like VDP.

Phill Reynolds 
Our philosophy with clients is 'if you need it, we'll do it'. And I do think demand for VDP will grow - it just needs a couple of big brands to do it and that will set the market off.

Donna Brown
Print companies need to talk to agencies and clients a lot more and explain what they can do. I certainly don't have printers banging on my door saying they have something different to offer - and VDP is part of that. We need to communicate better across the market. We certainly have issue with speed to market, regional messaging etc. If VDP can provide a better solution at a price that's right then I'd be interested in it. We could argue for VDP print to be considered alongside the rest of the ad. spend in other, electronic media.

Matteo Rigamonti 
I think there is room for wide-format VDP but so far we have only undertaken five orders. We don't promote VDP because we're an online service and you can't really explain the benefit of VDP over the Web. As VDP popularity rises we may have to rethink. If we can see that it makes money we will sell it.

Gary Peeling 
It's all about terminology and how we market VDP to those who plan 'community' strategies. We need to break out of the boxes that exist in the mind of the advertiser and show them that we can bring a creative solution without threatening them.



This Round Table was sponsored by HP which has been at the leading edge of VDP development for a number of years. You can find case studies of how print companies have integrated the service at www.ga-casestudies.com

Image Reports will be conducting a number of Round Tables during 2010. If there are specific issues you would like to see discussed please contact the editor Lesley Simpson.  Email Lesley.Simpson@imagereportsmag.co.uk