Systems for the Production of Digitally Printed Short-Run and Tailored Advertising

Personalization, tailoring and customization are options often mentioned in connection with digital printing. These concepts need accurate definitions to make sure that they are understood correctly. This paper describes the different ways to produce tailored, short-run advertising materials on demand by digital printing. The characteristics of the present technologies for the production of variable data and tailored printed products are reviewed and the most important shortcomings identified. A case study in which business-to-business marketing material was created and tested in practice, using the existing tools, is reported. The efforts and costs needed to create a system (databases, tools and design practices) for planning and implementing tailoring, the limitations of the available technology and the attained benefits are evaluated with the advertising agency and the advertiser. A prototype system was developed at VTT for tailoring shop advertising. A WWW-browser is used for storewise tailoring. The system has a repository of the available content elements (layout, pictures, text) and these as well as the product type, such as a poster or a leaflet, can be selected therein. The final product is printed by the digital printing method.