This article was authored by Posterboy Printing account manager Daniel Edwards

When we look at dealing with any brand or business there are certain things that we look for. Time in business is a classic checkpoint. If a business has only been open for a short time, then there is reason to be wary, do they know what they are doing, will they be around next week to deliver on their promises.

Web presence and social media are another place that is easily checked. These checks are like a quick health check of a business we haven’t dealt with before.

Print collateral is another checkpoint and a substantive one, more so than many others. Does the business have collateral we can read, and what is its quality? On a subconscious level, words on paper carry more weight than any other format. A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it is written on. Digital communications are even less trustworthy.

We trust paper, and communications sent on paper. If we want a communication to be taken seriously, then we physically send it on paper.

Imagine that you received an email from Richard Branson that he typed up himself. How would you know that it was different from every other fishy email you’ve received. How long would it take for you to believe that you really had received an email from Branson?

The truth is that there is a good chance you’d never even read it, and Richard would cry himself to sleep after staying up all night hitting send and receive hoping for your reply that never came.

Now imagine you received a letter in the mail from Branson, with his signature on the bottom. Authenticity is assumed when it comes to print. You may question why he is sending you a letter (or not), but you are much more likely to believe its authenticity.

This trust we have in ink on paper transfers to the business that has sent it. The physicality of print is walking the walk. It is there, in the room, a physical presence with the reader taking up space and representing the brand.

This could be because of the implied cost of the piece. We all know that print costs money to produce, and the simple fact that the brand has spent money to put something there will increase the reader’s estimation of the brand.

This value of implied cost is lived out in the book publishing market. Much of the work that goes into producing a book is done before ink hits the page. There is editing, proofreading, peer reviews, graphic design, typesetting and so on, none of which includes the actual author sitting down and writing. The actual print and paper cost is only a relatively small fraction of the production cost.

This is to say that producing an e-textbook costs only a little less than producing a physical textbook, especially if the final production quantity is relatively small. But the market will not pay the same amount of money for an e-book as for a physical book. Consumers don’t value an e-book in the same way they value a printed book.

Instead, they value information on paper more highly than non-physical formats.

Producing print marketing, and putting it into a consumer’s hand displays that the brand values them enough to spend money to create a connection. The consumer understands this immediately because they can feel the proof of it in their hand. This high esteem is mirrored back on the brand by the consumer, and their estimation of the brand increases.

Providing a visual

The University of Minnesota conducted a study into the effect of point of sale displays in supermarkets on organic foods in 1997.  They recorded sales data at 12 chain stores for 14 products. In half of the stores, they installed point of sale printed marketing for 2 brands, and in the other half, they did nothing using it as the control group.

At the end of a six-week period, they conducted 400 intercept interviews as customers left the store, presenting the shopper with three logos, the two from the study, and a third fictitious brand, and asked if the shopper recognized the logos. They found an 11 per cent increase in brand recognition for the store with the point of sale signage.

Researchers then took their study to high-end and bargain stores. Prior to the study, the high-end stores did not use a lot of POS signage, while the bargain stores already used it a lot. After the additional POS signage was installed by the researchers, the bargain stores experienced an immediate increase in sales in the promoted brands, while the high-end stores did not.

However, the high-end stores began to experience the same increase in sales as the bargain stores after a few weeks. This suggests that the shoppers in the high end were not used to POS signage, and it took them a few weeks to get used to it.

This also suggests the power of brand building over time. As the profile of the brand increased with the shoppers, their trust and willingness to purchase increased

Dreyers Ice Cream in New York City, US, did full vehicle wraps on 10 VW bugs. The artwork was primarily branding with no offers. The VW owners were paid a monthly fee to drive their wrapped vehicles around pre-determined routes.

The routes were based on traffic flow and population during peak hours to get maximum exposure. Each vehicle accumulated at least 500,000 impressions per month.

By the second week of the campaign, Dryers had such an overwhelming response that they doubled the size of their “sweet fleet”. They added supermarket parking lot stays where the drivers would park their branded cars at supermarkets and stand next to their car and hand out coupons.

This led to a further increase in sales. Again, an increase in brand profile leads to an increase in sales, which is proof of increased trust in the brand.

These case studies show that consumer trust is increased by tactile print that is held in the hand, as well as a visual print that is only viewed. Print is such a flexible communication medium, it can be used in so many ways it is difficult to stay across all the options available today, particularly for people outside the industry.

As an industry insider, it is easy to forget that people on the outside aren’t across all the advances and new options. Print sellers need to be ready to make suggestions to their customers and help them make the most out of the medium rather than just be order takes.

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