Future Print Virtual Summit Q&A: Simon Biltcliffe, Webmart UK
We spoke to FuturePrint Virtual Summit speaker Simon Biltcliffe, Chief Executive, Webmart UK, about the profound effect COVID-19 is having on marketing, the seismic change we’ll see in consumer trends as a result, and how print will need to adapt to recover.
Don’t miss Simon’s session, Reboot Your Business, on June 2nd.
Check out the full schedule here.
WHAT IMPACT IS COVID-19 HAVING ON THE INDUSTRY?
It’s a profound, significant effect, and it will mean print will need to be a lot more digitally savvy. Not just the print itself, but the pre-press, data, communication and integration of online and offline. That’s the most powerful form of marketing these days, you can’t have one without the other, and we’ll certainly see a coming together of the online and offline worlds. In the short term, a lot of the print industry is furloughed and that means there isn’t the capacity there used to be, but in many cases it isn’t needed. If you can sell your product you don’t need to market it, and if you can’t sell your product, you’re not going to market it anyway, so marketing has gone down like a lead balloon.
HOW HAVE YOU RESPONDED TO THE CRISIS?
Our systems are designed to work from home so it doesn’t make a jot of difference from an effectiveness point of view, but it does from a symbiosis point of view, from an enjoying work point of view, from an osmosis point of view, and the fact that there’s little in the way of work out there. Lots are furloughed included myself, which actually has given me the opportunity to do lots of things I want to do.
WHICH SECTORS WITHIN PRINT DO YOU BELIEVE HAVE BEEN MOST STRONGLY IMPACTED BY COVID-19?
Marketing. Obviously POS marketing, promotional, exhibition, all the stuff that we can’t do now. least affected is packaging, or affected in a positive way in many respects, food packaging in particular.
WHAT CONSUMER TRENDS DO YOU THINK WILL GROW AS A RESULT OF THE CRISIS?
Buying online, undoubtedly. People have got very comfortable with it, now we don’t like the thought of having to drag yourself out for something that isn’t a luxury product or an experiential product. I’ve done Click and Collect for the first time and I have to say it was fantastic. So it will be a seismic change, and hopefully a lot less driving, hopefully a lot more video conferencing and hopefully the environment will benefit as a consequence. But we will need to be more digitally savvy, end of. That’s the one big change. My generation aren’t digital natives, but we need to act like it. Digital will really be coming to the fore, and we need to understand how we can offer a broader, visual and data-driven service, to deliver that not just for print but the other side of marketing as well.
