Tax doesn’t have to be taxing….

Back in 2004 when digital spot colours were in their infancy we pioneered a project with a large Leicester firm to print 250,000 personalised, laminated and creased budget tax cards. The cards were sent out across the UK to be used a marketing collateral for accountants.

By moving the project to a completely digital process from litho meant our client was able to reduce lead times, offer greater flexibility to their clients, eliminate the need to mix inks on a litho press (prior to this 113 separate ink mixes were needed), significantly reduce costs and they could handle more cards than ever before. Having the ability to print 6 colours digitally means we are able to match 96% of all Pantone spot colours without the need to mix a single ink which was a major advantage for this project.

Today, this project has grown to 3 times its original size and during the past few years we have continually looked to make improvements; as a result we’re now able to fully automate the changing of Pantone colours within the document entirely from a database. This process alone has taken 2 years of development and, as confirmed by Pantone in the USA, this process has never been attempted before. All this work is now completed within 5 days and is completely automated, including despatch and delivery tracking.

Make way for personalised books…..

One of our recent clients appointed us to produce personalised children’s stories for several leading children’s characters. Utilising our unique print-on-demand digital process we can produce books that incorporate the children that will receive the books as a gift.

We won the contract from nine leading UK print houses and the decision to award us the contract was based on our service, our print solutions, our ability to deliver and our commitment on investment. As Richard Adey, a director of Penwizard explained: “Our new joint venture with a leading UK publishing house features one of their leading children's characters and this venture will be the first time that a major publisher has entered the personalised children’s book market."
We are now able to produce individual books based around this children’s character and uniquely include the cartoon version of the child that will be receiving the gift, so that they actually become part of the story. It is expected to be a very popular gift and as such we needed to work with a printing house that could deliver an integrated solution – from the time when the order is placed on the website through to delivery of the unique book within a rigid time frame.

After considering a wide range of print partners we found that only the Prime Group could fulfil every aspect of our appointment criteria. The quality of Prime's digital printing was extremely impressive, as was their attention to detail, understanding our complex needs, their ability to deliver a workable solution and being able to offer – in-house – high quality laminating, perfect binding, finishing and dispatch facilities.

Jon Tolley and his team have been very proactive and I was delighted to award this very important ‘Print on Demand’ contract to Prime Group, which turned out to be the only company in the UK that could meet all our needs under one roof – a company that I would say is leading the market and unique in the UK. I very much look forward to working with Jon into 2008."
The popularity of this type of product is now growing and we aim to be able to continue to innovate this and projects like it.

Break from the old routine……
When Warner Holidays came to us with a problem, we were on hand to supply the perfect solution.

The Problem
Warner Breaks mails out in excess of 50,000 generic brochures every month to their database. They already had the ability to clean the data they hold to remove duplicates, gone aways and deceased contacts but wanted to be able to target their audience better with more accurate information relevant to the person receiving the catalogue. They hold data on the client such as date of birth, marital status, last trips purchased and gender, but did not know how best to deal with this information.
Whilst they liked the overall concept of a personalised brochure they also wanted to retain the price point that they had been working to.

The Solution:
We designed the concept whereby Warner continues to produce the catalogue the most cost effective way possible – via web offset litho – and therefore retain the flexibility to control where the brochures are produced, at what cost and by whom. We then produce the completely personalised front cover digitally, which the litho brochure is bound in to.

The examples below outline exactly how the information was used with sample data.
Michael
As he is widowed the cover text is subtly changed to a friendly approach; the cover image does not show couples and is reflected to match his previous weekend break purchase. He is pointed to a brochure page that relates to his interest and previous buying pattern. Based on his postcode his nearest Warner break is extracted from the artwork and printed on the reverse of the cover and he is offered a discount based on him potentially being single.

Carrie
As she is married the image on the front is gender specific (the female is performing the action in the image) and shows a couple. Again the text is changed to reflect marital status and because she has a partner is offered a greater discount.

Iris
Iris on the other hand has not disclosed her marital status so now a gender specific image is used and only uses an image of friends together so that she is not offend with any assumptions about her lifestyle. Her previous purchases were Weekend Experiences so the text reflects this and again is based on postcode data, which directs her to her nearest break.

Cross media at its best…..

To make further use of the data held by Warner, we created the concept of a monthly mail out to all their customers whose birthday fell in the following month. This was aimed at promoting holidays to be taken in conjunction with their birthday and different free offers and incentives including discount, champagne, chocolates and spa experiences.

All this is taken up via a personalised URL (PURL) printed on the base of the card directing them to their own unique micro website where the offers are made relevant to them. Using this example, Michael is offered a Warner Experience Break that is nearest to his home, based on his postcode, and by clicking through to the personal link he is automatically taken through seamlessly to the relevant break on the main page where he is able to see what hotels and breaks are available.

Building an on-line society…..

In 1998 Prime Stationery was establish to meet the growing demand for clients to have all their stationery and marketing material stored, managed and dispatched remotely.

As a current major supplier to the Nottingham Building Society (NBS) we identified an opportunity to provide a solution to one of their on-going problems. The process of controlling all the stock of printed material does not in itself sound particularly complex. But, if the personnel employed to manage this service do not have experience in buying print, it can very quickly become a very expensive uncoordinated service with spiralling costs.

Building on our extensive experience in providing print for NBS we were ideally placed to understand their requirements and provide an outstanding solution. Within the first year of operation we demonstrated cost savings of over £60,000 just by handling stock correctly and by preventing over ordering. NBS still has full control over where its printed items come from with Prime managing stock levels and branch distribution.

Prime was one of the first companies in the UK to implement a full web-to-print solution with online stock management. This enabled the NBS to have online stock ordering at branch level completely tailored to each individual branch, each with unique log-on and passwords. Complete control of the system is under the watchful eye of the marketing department who are able to monitor and authorise certain products, check stock movement round the clock and report on almost anything at the touch of a button. Items like business cards that used to take 5 days just to get through the proofing process can now be created online, printed, finished and despatched within 24 hours. This system can also easily incorporate other stationery items like letterheads, compliment slips, leaflets and forms that need to be printed on demand, proofed quickly and have short lead times.

We now store more than 500 items of stationery for NBS and move some 4.2 million items of stock every year, delivering to over 70 locations throughout the UK – all made possible by our online stock management and web-to-print solution.

Just what the doctor ordered…

Pharmaceutical company Menarini took our innovation ideas to the maximum recently when we provided a solution to their promotional marketing needs.

Menarini needed to target newly qualified doctors with a promotional item that would last and remain in front of them throughout the year. The problem they had was that they needed to make these items completely unique to them.

Our Solution
We created a one-piece mailshot, completely personalised to the individual offering them an image personalised desk calendar as a free gift with a personalised URL and unique username and password. On receipt of the mailer, the user was able to input their own birthday and that of 5 other key members of family or friends. Once submitted this data was captured along with a specified start date and a personalised calendar was created, packaged and posted directly to the individual.

Each key date was marked within the calendar and if that date fell on a bank holiday, the original bank holiday text was automatically replaced with the key date information. On the individual’s birthday the date was highlighted and the image for that month was replaced with a birthday cake with the decoration on the cake spelling out the name of the doctor.

The project proved to be huge success for Menarini and is now used annually with the project gaining extremely positive feedback from doctors like including:
“I have been in this industry for 20 years and this is the best item I have ever seen.”
“How are you going to top this next year?”
“You sometimes get items that haven’t been done before but this is something else”
“Just wanted to tell you personally how truly amazed and thrilled I am to have received your calendar through the post this morning”
Positive feedback alone from this industry sector is unheard of and highly unusual.

Odds on favourite…

Online betting company Betfair used a similar technique to that employed by Menarini but took the concept a stage further by having 15 completely unique personalised image sets created by our design team. The calendar incorporated 10 unique dates and 40 personalised key sporting events marked in the calendar all from multiple databases.

The concept proved so successful we were presented with an award at the 2008 National Business Calendar Awards.