Darwinism and Print

When Darwin published his ‘On the Origin of Species’ in 1859, the establishment were apoplectic. God created the world in 4004 BC, according to the authoritative figure of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce in 1860.

The Vatican was not pleased with Darwin – it fundamentally challenged some of the pillars of Christianity itself. Who knows, in another 100 years we may find a different body of evidence that changes our established beliefs again and we find that Darwin was totally wrong? But for now, the perceived wisdom is that he’s right. On the 11^th of February 2009, the Vatican finally accepted he may be right after all!

Contrary to the naysayers, print is not on the 'endangered species' list and is not going to go away anytime soon. It is, however, changing at an ever increasing pace. When we consider how much ‘unused’ (irrelevant, unread, out of date or just too many printed in the first place) print has been thrown away over the years (some estimates put the figure at 60%) the size of the ‘printing industry’ (by volume of paper converted) has always been artificially large by any metric based on marketing effectiveness or efficiency.

Environmental concerns, the impact of alternative communication channels and the global economic tsunami have forced those that commission print to reassess its value in the marketing mix. We should get used to fact that our ‘industry’ will never be the same again. By the time we get through this recession, the old lithographic printing business model will be but a distant memory for all but the ultra lean and mean super sites soaking up the last of the volume market before the more agile performers eat their lunch with next generation high speed, high quality variable content inkjet machines. Those ‘agile performers’ will have evolved rapidly into data centric, service oriented multi-channel providers of marketing solutions.

There is a window of opportunity between now and then to lay down your marker and join the elite band of visionaries who will shape the future of (arguably) the most important development in the history of Humankind – PRINT!