Touch Me!

A great print piece is made up of, essentially, two components: the ink and the paper. From those two things, amazing designs that can take your breath away, that engage consumers or that drive brand messaging all emerge. Often, when thinking about print, we focus on only one of those components: the ink. We look at the graphics of the piece, how it’s laid out and what the message is.

But it’s a mistake to overlook the substrate.

“The tactile qualities of a printed piece can be extremely important, and can ultimately help boost its overall effectiveness,” noted Ron Pergande, GPA’s director of digital media. He went on to say, “For example, the whole point of direct mail is to get the recipient to stop, engage with the piece, and act upon it. By using papers or other substrates with an added tactile dimension, whether it’s a felt, linen, or soft touch paper, you’re engaging the recipient’s sense of touch.”

“Coated or uncoated, textured or smooth, paper should be considered part of the overall customer experience and brand engagement,” agreed Ferkó Goldinger, marketing manager for Appleton Coated. “And if the paper doesn’t have much tactility, it can be enhanced with textured coatings or embossing and debossing.”

“We’re hard wired to react to and retain information when we’re holding it and touching it,” said Chris Harrold, vice president of Business Development and creative director for Mohawk. “When that sense of touch is activated, it’s a part of learning process. It causes people to retain information more deeply and react to it at an emotional level that just doesn’t happen with a screen.”

There’s no denying that plain white paper is far less expensive than some of the specialty papers with textures, or coatings that create different “feels” on a printed piece. But the added cost often leads to a higher return on the investment, and better engagement from the ultimate consumers who are receiving the piece. For PSPs who can demonstrate the power of paper, the opportunity is there to become a valued partner who helps take the customer’s jobs to the next level instead of the lowest-cost bidder who can be set aside at a moment’s notice.

“By engaging multiple senses, you’re forging a stronger connection and experience, which makes your message more memorable,” said Pergande. “If everyone else is going for what’s cheapest, marketers who opt for papers that feel more opulent are sending the message that what they have to say is more valuable, and are simultaneously enhancing their image.”

This is especially true when the target audience is in the Millennial generation or younger, noted Harrold. He went on to say, “Culturally, for whatever reasons — perhaps a reaction to technology — the millennial generations are experiencing how attractive craft and handmade items are. They want goat cheese from the farm; they want craft beer; they want hand-written letters. There is a massive multi-billion dollar market for locally sourced, hand crafted materials.” And that movement, he points out, is one that PSPs and their customers can take advantage of by creating marketing materials that look and feel luxurious. Harrold noted that pieces that are thoughtfully crafted with beautiful designs with high-end finishes and textures are getting amazing feedback. They are getting noticed and talked about and acted on, as opposed to going directly into the trash without a second glance.

“We have seen a renaissance in folks in their late teens to early 30’s seeking out paper and print,” agreed Goldinger. “It’s often in the world of craft and art, but it also translates to the brand and creative side with commercial printing. Especially on the younger side of the scale, print is exciting and engaging and the reason is simple – these are people that basically grew up with screens, use them at work and at home, and are looking for relief from screen, both creative outlets as well as beautiful commercial execution.”

The Right Texture

Just tossing a direct mail piece onto the first premium paper you come across isn’t necessarily the right approach, however.

“From firsthand experience, I’ve seen our pearlescent, lustre and silver stocks make the biggest first impressions,” noted Pergande. “When we show printed applications on these papers to print service providers, you can see the change on their faces. They want to stop, feel it for themselves, and start holding it up in the light…you can see their wheels turning because they’re already picturing what they can do with it. We don’t see that reaction with just any paper.”

“Job one is convincing the consumer to engage. Some of the main solutions are: strong design, well-chosen colors (whether the paper or the print) and good paper choices – differentiating by thickness, and engaging textures,” said Goldinger.

“A small critic of the print industry is that when equipment manufacturers selling presses, everything has been dulled into a most common denominator of glossy coated paper,” said Harrold. “It is the most common way to achieve the end result, and some of that is for good reason. You can get the biggest impact with the least amount of work. But at the end of the day, there is a huge world of paper out there. Uncoated papers, in the hands of a consumer, more often than not gets a reaction. They like the feel of the paper in their hands. I think there is a missed opportunity in that for printers.”

Because higher-quality substrates do cost more, one option is to convince print buyers to try one or more versions of their piece on different stocks to test the real-world results with their target market. Send out the same piece on the stock they have been using, then do a test run with a few different high-end papers — with the exact same graphics and messaging. If the print buyers can see for themselves how much higher the response rates are on better quality paper, they will be far more likely to invest in them for a full run. They can also see the differences between using coated versus uncoated stocks, or how different textures might resonate with their audience.

“Typically, the unit cost is the biggest budget constraint,” said Pergande. “My recommendation to print service providers is to version with substrates early in the planning stages of the campaign or promotion. For example, print the same piece on a pearlescent, felt, or heavyweight sheet, then compare those to a house sheet with the decision maker. Until decision makers see the impact for themselves, it can be difficult justifying an added expense.”

“If you are in print sales and are reading this —do not sell features! Sell benefits and illustrate those benefits with case studies and customer references,” stressed Goldinger. “Otherwise, it’s a price game and a race to the bottom. It’s like the bit from comedian Brian Regan, ‘This refrigerator here keeps your food cold for $600, this one here keeps your food cold for $800…’”

At the end of the day, there is a pent up demand in the market for great paper stocks that help tell a brand’s story and get them noticed. It’s easy to dismiss poor returns for print components on the belief that the target market — usually the younger generations — just don’t get paper. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. They don’t have any interest in business as usual, but they are hungry for more tactile marketing.

Harrold put it best, when he related a trip he took to the offices of Shutterstock. “We’re paper nerds. We went to the office of Shutterstock in New York City, in the Empire State Building. I would say they are pretty emblematic of the millennial generation. They have two floors that are totally renovated, and it is an incredible space. Very 21st century in design, and they are all wearing hoodies and casual clothes. Then we invited four of them to our paper mill. You would have thought they were at Disneyland. They said ‘this is the coolest place we’ve ever been.’ The point being, there is an appetite out there and the print community needs to be more aware of this demographic.”