Digital printing has been around
now for over 20 years. In that time commercial printers have used
the power of digital printing extensively to create more
personalized communications. We all have received personalized
letters, postcards and catalogs in the mail. But in the label
industry the usage of digital printing has lagged behind.
The Digital Label Printing Pioneers
There are companies however who are leveraging the power of digital
label printing to enhance their brand. Jones Soda is one of the
pioneers of this concept. They have been producing their famous
colorful soda with custom labels for over 10 years now. If you buy a
bottle of Jones Soda there is always a photo on the label and these
photos continually change. The photos have been submitted by fans of
the soda, and for every print run of their bottle labels they use
different photos.
So Jones Soda has made custom label printing an integral part of
their brand. But they have gone one step further with the
www.myjones.com service, which
began in 1998. This is where you can upload your own color photo and
order your own personalized 12-pack of soda. You can enter in photo
captions as well as several lines of text to make your soda bottle
truly your own.
Obviously, to print full color labels in quantities as small as 12,
Jones Soda is leveraging digital label printing. They don’t share
any of their secrets, but my guess is that they gang run several
(maybe even hundreds) of these custom label orders together and then
print them on a digital press. The photos are in full color, but the
quality of the printing is a little disappointing. It is low
resolution, certainly not like the high quality print you get at
Lightning Labels. But their target market is young people who may
not care about the quality, they just want something inexpensive,
and Jones Soda provides them that.
Custom Labels Means Heinz
This past summer Heinz jumped onto the digital label printing
bandwagon. In celebration of the famous ketchup brand's 130th
birthday Heinz is offering everyone the ability to create their very
own ketchup label at
www.myheinz.com. Now, you can't upload your photo here, you get
just three black lines of type - 18 characters each, but it is a
bold new concept from one of the largest food companies in the
world. Best of all the minimum order is just one bottle of ketchup.
It is impressive that a company with such large volumes has
undertaken this concept, but Heinz obviously sees the value in
creating a more personalized experience for their customers. They
are the first mass market consumer product to undertake this level
of personalization, but you can be sure they won't be the last. The
print quality of the text is excellent, and it is the same font as
the regular Heinz ketchup. The photo at the left is the bottle we
ordered here at Lightning Labels, we wanted to get a first hand look
at what Heinz has done. No doubt they are printing their regular
label blanks and then overprinting the customized part later with a
digital label press.
A New Label for Johnnie Walker
Johnnie Walker has taken a slightly different approach. You can
customize your
Johnnie Walker label in a similar way to Heinz, but there are a
couple of big differences. First, the labels are actually free. Yes,
they are giving away the labels in the hope that you will buy a
bottle of Johnnie Walker at your local liquor store and affix the
label yourself. You can create three lines of 20 characters each of
black text, and your labels will arrive in 4-6 weeks.
The web site for ordering the personalized Johnnie Walker label is
quite simple, and so it probably wasn't that expensive. There are
just two screens - an order entry screen and a preview screen with
just a few fields of data to enter. The whole ordering process took
me about two minutes. Again with a minimum order of just one label,
Johnnie Walker is leveraging the power of digital label printing.
Other products such as M&M's, Hershey's Chocolates, and Wheaties
allow personalization as well, although these companies are not
using labels for their personalization. But this all points to a
trend that has been a long time coming to consumer products but it
is quite likely a trend that is here to stay. One day you will most
likely be able to personalize the packaging for many of the products
you consume on a daily basis.
How to Take Advantage of Digital Label Printing
I can hear you saying, I certainly don't have the budget of Heinz or
Johnnie Walker, so what can I do? But the fact is you can create
personalized labels for your customers quite easily and
inexpensively. With Lightning Labels advanced digital label printing
technology it will only cost a little more than you are paying now.
Here are some ideas for you to take advantage of this new trend.
1. Allow your customers to personalize your product
Heinz, Jones Soda and Johnnie Walker have done just that. They
have web sites where people can enter and order the personalized
product, but you don't have to even start out that sophisticated.
You could just offer this to your customers in an email, and then
you just gather all the responses into an Excel spreadsheet. We
could import all these names here and print your regular label
design along with the personalized names as one job.
2. "Regionalize" your labels
You may not want to offer your customers such a high level of
customization. A simpler way to get started is just to "regionalize"
your products. By that I mean, have different designs for different
regions of the country. It could be as simple as a beach scene for
coastal California, a mountain scene for Colorado and Idaho, corn
fields in Nebraska, a maple tree for Vermont. Again with digital
printing we could take all these different designs and combine them
into one run of labels.
3. Holiday Gifts
We have had personalized gifts for decades now - you can get
monogrammed shirts or bath towels from dozens of places. But you
could also do a personalized holiday gift for all your customers. We
could print labels for your company that personally wishes all your
customers a happy Holiday Season, and you could affix these labels
to your own product for a truly personal holiday gift.
4. Partner with a Winery for a Truly Unique Gift
Take a look at the “wine label” opposite. You will notice that
it has a personalized holiday message just for you. Like our labels,
this newsletter has been printed on a digital press so we can
demonstrate what we are talking about here. Sure you can give your
customers a bottle of wine this holiday season, but it would be a
much more powerful gift with a personalized holiday message on the
label. It is quite easy to do, many wineries will be able to help
you out here - and of course, we would be happy to print your
personalized holiday wine labels.
The Personalization Generation
We are entering a new world of personalization. With new
technology everyone can express themselves in their own unique way -
in fact the younger generation is growing up with this expectation.
The companies that take advantage of this early will have a huge
advantage. With advanced digital label printing technology we now
have the power to create a different label for every product we
sell. Like Heinz, Jones Soda and Johnnie Walker your company can
personalize your product labels for your customers. And of course,
you will need a high quality digital label printer to help you.
The teenagers of today have never known a world without the
Internet, cell phones, and home PC's. If you look at the popularity
of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, this speaks
to the growing trend of mass personalization. These people expect to
be able to create a unique look that is truly their own. When the
teenagers of today become affluent consumers in a few years time,
the retail world will change.
The beautiful thing is that this trend is only just beginning. You
can differentiate yourselves from your competition by being an early
adopter of this mass personalization. You can leverage the power of
digital label printing and create a unique package for all your
customers. Forward thinking companies such as Heinz and Jones Soda
have paved the way for everyone else. But with only a small handful
of companies offering this to their customers, the opportunity is
certainly knocking.
