Nanography was heralded by many at the recent DRUPA print conference as a game changing technology for the commercial, advertising and marketing industries….

Nanography was heralded by many at the recent DRUPA print conference as a game changing technology for the commercial, advertising and marketing industries. But does it have the potential to win back the hearts of a marketing community who’ve been largely won over by digital?

Benny Landa is the brains behind a technology which promises to deliver unprecedented image quality as well as offering the lowest cost-per-page images within digital production.

While nanography has great promise it’s not the first attempt the print industry has made to modernise in the hope they can better satisfy the needs of marketeers. Over the past few years, the industry faced up to its own short comings along with the threat from digital marketing initiatives. The traditional litho press manufacturers, for example, have increased focus on making the equipment faster both in terms of set up and running times in an attempt to become more efficient. Sadly, this is still just improvement rather than transformation.

Nanography on the other hand offers the broadest colour garment and the sharpest definition at the highest speed unlike the litho press manufacturers. But the most important advantage is not the quality that it produces, it’s the market altering ability to print bespoke and varying products.

The possibilities that this opens for marketers could be far reaching. It promises to alter the view of print as traditional and uninspiring, offering a world of bespoke brochures, precisely personalised mail outs, varied and individual poster campaigns and marketing campaigns that can be specifically targeted at individuals. Such initiatives, with the current print technology, would be hugely expensive; nanography, is not only fast, excellent quality and inexpensive, it also allows marketeers to dramatically cut down on ink and paper resources involved with pushing generalised marketing collateral.

Initially, nanography promises to have a significant impact in the pharmaceutical, food and automotive industries. In the car industry for example – which places a high value on selling personalised products that consumers want to ‘experience’ – potential buyers could simply enter in a few preferential details and receive a brochure, which only includes models that suit their interests. Although this could be done digitally, luxury industries such as this value the ‘glossy brochure’ and would surely welcome this chance to improve it.

For the moment, the print industry is still somewhat holding it’s breath for the outcome of the first marketing campaign to truly integrate nanographic printing. There’s a while to wait, the technology is not going to be available for a year and it has not actually been officially tested to prove all of the unique abilities it promises. But I believe there will be a price to pay for being left behind.

Nanography is really just the latest demonstration of the self-conscious modernisation of the printing industry and is surely a nudge to marketeers that print should not be written off. Potentially it heralds a new era in intelligent and personalised printed marketing material, which could hold enormous value in targeting niche audiences who’d previously been out of reach using standardised methods.

For these reasons, I truly believe print is set for a comeback and, if embraced, could offer exciting potential for marketeers while holding the greatest chance yet of bucking the seemingly exponential move from the physical to digital media.