The world is moving to mobile technology – smartphones and tablets. Every piece of research around the world shows that mobile consumption is rising massively. Soon there will be more people using mobile technology to access the web than traditional desktops and laptops, in fact in many spheres they already are. Anyone who has been on a train or bus recently will note the tiny amount of people consuming published content in print, and the huge number on their mobile technologies.
For the publishers of brochures, magazines, guides, reports, catalogues and the like this has presented a serious challenge, how do they get their content onto mobile technology. Various techniques have been tried: QR codes, digital flipbooks, but with little success, due mainly to the cumbersome nature of access and the difficulty in reading a page designed for print on a mobile device. Mobile technology offers massive opportunities for marketing thanks to the instant digital connection with brand owners, but publishers as yet have been unable to offer a clear connection.
For printers the rise in mobile technology has been met with no little trepidation, with the fear that it could supercede print, and certainly for some sectors, newspapers stands out, this is happening before their eyes. Printers need a way of exploiting the mass move into mobile, or embracing it not fighting it.
Into this situation has entered Radiaca, a joint venture set up to develop and commercialise emerging technologies, and whose first product will enable printers to cash in on mobile technology. They will do this by providing their clients with the means to get their content onto mobiles in a mobile friendly format. This will enable publishers to offer that direct connection between the content consumer and the brand owner.
Richard Linley, chief technology officer at Radiaca says, “Print on mobile is a new business opportunity for printers. There is no cost to start, only some time and commitment. It is a complete service, so the actual work is performed by Radiaca.”
The Radiaca product is the first in the world that takes a PDF for print, pulls out all the elements in an individual article – headline, subhead, text, photo, caption, breakouts – and reformats it for a mobile device. So the reader is not looking at a replica of the printed page, as in the flipbook concept, but is looking at a mobile friendly article, and an article that can have various calls to action inserted into it. Linley says, “Radiaca encourages two way communication through the use of polls, surveys, and calls to action. Real time feedback for the publishers’ customers.”
The business proposition is that printers will be able to provide a significant new and tangible value add service to their clients, which enables those clients to exploit the commercial opportunities of mobile publishing. Doing so will add a valuable new revenue stream to the printer, enabling them to profit from the move to mobile. Printers will not pay, they will take a margin from the service that Radiaca provides and the publisher pays for, typically between 15 per cent and 30 per cent depending on volumes.
All the tech is handled by Radiaca. So as well the printer sending the PDF files of the job to print it also sends them to Radiaca, which then extracts the elements, reformats for mobile, and adds other communication elements. Shankar Vishwanath, Radiaca co-founder says, “It completes the circle, with the digital complementing the print. Printers are already creating the PDFs, they already have the customers, by using Radiaca they are offering their customers the opportunity to get onto mobile technology and expliot the multiple opportunities that are emerging.
“It is not just about getting print online or on mobile, but about what you do with it once it is there. It is about making buying decisions – and crucially actions – easy for the consumer, and getting the brand owner closer to the consumer.”
Radiaca delivers magazines, annual reports, brochures, guides and catalogues to the consumer through their mobile technology. It has none of the limitation which have affected flipbooks, which render magazine pages in the same format that they are printed in. Linley says, “Radiaca is a business proposition that stacks up. It is working with the irrevocable trend to mobiles, it enables printers to provide a means of the clients to get onto those mobiles, there is no IT requirement on the printer at all, Radica does all the work, and the brand owners get a direct easy connection with the consumers. All the printer has to do is explain the benefits to their clients, then Radiaca does the rest while the printer gets a healthy margin.”
Real time feedback is the name of the game, where consumers and brand owners can connect instantly and communicate directly, with the publisher as the media or man in the middle providing the platform to make it happen. For printers it means that all of a sudden the mobile world becomes friend not foe, something to be embraced and exploited. Linley says, “Print on mobile complements print – print is the starting point that can trigger a digital interaction.”
Radiaca is working on further developments, which will include sms delivery of publications and near field communications (NFC) similar to those used by banks for paypass. Radiaca for instance is being used with a Sydney Tourism brochure, where the reader places their phone on a page of the brochure, say advertising a zoo, and is then able to book tickets to the zoo directly. And as more businesses allow sign in with Facebook it makes the whole process as simple as can be for consumers, which is what they want.
Vishwanath says, “The future is just beginning, and printers as the traditional creators and communicators of content are in a prime position. Where traditionally they have used print as the platform to enable brand owners to get their message over they can now offer a mobile platform as well, the only difference being they don’t have to produce anything more than the PDF they already have for the print.”
Radiaca – a joint venture
Radiaca’s heritage in the print industry is long and substantial. It is a joint venture between Realview, the global pioneer in digital online magazine production, and Printer Magazines Group (PMG), the region’s biggest print business publisher. Realview works with a host opf publshers here and overseas with clients including the likes of National Geographic and the New York Times. Radiaca co-founder Shankar Vishwanath says, “We bring different but complementary skill sets to the table. Realview has the technology and PMG has a clear understanding of the business of print and publishing. Any printer working with clients who are magazine publishers, or producing catalogues,. Brochures, reports and guides should be talking to their clients about Radiaca, they will find the door opens wide for them, all publshers and brand owners want to get onto mobile platforms, but in a way that is beneficial to their customers, which Radiaca certainly is.”
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