One of the great benefits of managing an award competition like the Best-of-the-Best Program is seeing the great variety of work that is constantly being created by our customers. All submissions are unique in their own right; varying in target audience, intent, output, and effectiveness. I’ve always found great intrigue in reading the story behind each submission to learn more about who the piece was intended for, why the piece was actually created, and what goals it had set out to accomplish. Perhaps no story was stronger in this year’s Best-of-the-Best Contest than a winner in the Books and Manuals Category, MBA Group Ltd., of the United Kingdom, who aimed to help major publication Print Media Management (PMM) recover from a difficult economic climate in which print advertising budgets were slashed, leading to magazines suffering dramatic declines in revenue.
In order to increase revenue, MBA Group’s primary objective was to protect and enhance advertising revenue. Building greater loyalty between the readers and the advertisers was essential in order to accomplish this. With their recently acquired Xerox 980 Color Continuous Feed Printer, which can print up to 226 feet per minute, and clever usage of XMPie, MBA Group set out to produce the world’s first 100% variable magazine. This would undoubtedly resonate with readers as it would provide them with articles tailored to their interests, but would also provide extremely valuable opportunities to advertisers. PMM would also largely benefit, as they would be able to generate more revenue per page. In the past, PMM would sell a single page to a specific advertiser, but with the addition of variability they could now segment a page and sell it to several advertisers at a lesser cost, but while still attaining greater combined revenue.
See full article at: Digital Printing Hot Spot » Blog Archive » The World’s First 100% Variable Magazine.
