With integrated marketing campaigns claiming an increasing share of budgets, London is to get a major new event devoted to the fast-growing cross media marketing sector.
Informa Print Group, a division of Informa Exhibitions, has announced that Cross Media 2012 will take place at the Business Design Centre, London, on 3-4 September. The event will provide commercial printers, marketers, design & creatives, brand owners and their advertising and marketing agencies with a tightly-focused insight into current and future developments, in the delivery of integrated marketing campaigns using multiple platforms. Cross Media will cover all aspects of these platforms including print, the web, direct mail, email, SMS, PURLs, QR codes, mobile, video and social media.
A number of recent surveys demonstrate the growing adoption of cross media. According to the “Power of Print” survey*, 93% of buyers and marketers produce campaigns integrating print with email, SMS and the web, and 57% of the remainder plan to do so in future marketing campaigns. Other research for Informa shows 27.5% of marketers are already involved in cross media campaigns and 66% expect them to increase, while research by InfoTrends reveals that 90% of campaigns use more than one channel and 38% use three. In addition, a survey in the US by shop.org suggests 34% of consumers buy using at least three channels, and spend up to ten times more than single-channel shoppers.
Informa Exhibitions expects the event to attract both print businesses that have already made the transition to marketing service provider, and those who are considering the move but want to understand more about the opportunities cross media offers to increase profits through added-value print products. The Cross Media show floor will be divided into four distinct zones — Print and Production, Design and Creative, Digital and Direct Marketing, and Social Media, Web and Mobile. Each zone will have theatres featuring a programme of keynote presentations, demonstrations, workshops and case-studies.
Says Event Director Nick Craig Waller: “Cross Media 2012 will combine product and solution demonstrations with strategic and tactical insights into this rapidly evolving sector. There’s huge interest and activity in integrated multi-channel marketing, but the key dynamics of the sector — how the various platforms and channels work with each other — are still emerging.
“Our aim with Cross Media 2011 is to bring commercial print providers and their marketing clients together so that they have a better understanding about what the other has to offer, and they can see for themselves the potential for integrating paper-based marketing with digital and online tactics such as video, social media and email. For printers and marketers, cross media is a great opportunity to escape from the cut-throat market for commodity print. For marketers and agencies, it’s about showing how digital print, especially variable data print, plays a vital role in boosting the ROI on integrated campaigns.”
