Capturing the tremendous growth projected for digital printing in the world’s developing markets was the focus at a gathering of leading Xerox Corporation print provider customers May 28 in Dortmund, Germany. Some 81 members of the Xerox Graphic Arts Premier Partners representing 52 of the 77 member companies in developing markets attended the all-day event, themed “Embracing the Future.” It featured presentations by nine industry experts on strategies for capturing the digital opportunity.

Digital printing will grow by about 25 percent per year in developing markets (Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, India, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America) through 2010 — and digital color will grow by 50 percent, said Jean-Nöel Machon, president of Developing Markets Operations, Xerox Corporation, in the meeting’s opening remarks. “The message is quite simple,” he said. “Digital color printing is the place to invest. It is really one of the strongest segments of growth for the future.”

Many Xerox Premier Partners were visiting Germany for the drupa 2008 trade fair in Düsseldorf, which began the next day, and attended the nearby Dortmund meeting to gain insights into value-added solutions that can extend their market leadership. For example, Gábor Szabó, key account manager of Budapest, Hungary-based Prime Rate, wanted to find out what’s new and to learn ways to penetrate their Central and Eastern European markets, especially for color variable information printing and direct marketing. “We’ve been successful with digital book printing, but adoption of digital color printing and one-to-one marketing has been slow,” he said. “We try to educate our customers by running seminars on opportunities with variable data printing every six months or so, and we always get positive feedback. The Premier Partners meeting showed us that we are on the right track and need to keep making the effort.”

One theme of the Dortmund meeting was that digital color is especially effective in value-added, integrated communications programs. But simply sharing messaging and look-and-feel across media is an incomplete view of integrated communications, said keynote speaker Florian Hallers of Serviceplan Gruppe für innovative Kommunikation GmbH & Co. KG, the largest independent marketing communications agency in Germany. Rather, successful practitioners tell image-rich stories that resonate across media, leading consumers from one discipline to another, driving brand awareness and ultimately, sales, he said.

In the spirit of networking and knowledge sharing that is at the heart of the Premier Partners network, two members presented.