With the backing of major brands, digital will finally have its day

P&G’s global packaging head honcho has pronounced that there’s no room on its roster for any supplier lacking a digital press. His comments, expressed during the official launch of HP Indigo’s new multi-substrate compatible WS6000 system, represent not so much a green shoot as the realisation of a whole field of dreams.

History will undoubtedly abbreviate the time it’s taken for digital to hit the mainstream, but it’s been a triumph of continuing faith over entrenched belief. With the benefit of hindsight, the progression towards acceptance could have been accelerated had early developers focused attention on the customers’ customers, rather than seeking to persuade an intrinsically conservative converter mindset that a click of a mouse and the push of a button was a viable alternative to inky-fingered craftsmanship.

It might be glaringly obvious now that packaging print is more about marketing than engineering. To the class of ’93, however things were different. Anyone around at the time must be able to recall the sharply sceptical intake of breath that greeted the proposition. Indigo founder Benny Landa’s bullish prediction that ‘everything that can become digital will become digital’ was guaranteed to get straight up the nose of established collective vested interest.

In those days, digital reproduction was akin to the heavy mascara and sloppily applied lipstick allure of unadulterated jailbait. In claiming to have an ink as good as offset, Landa inadvertently (or perhaps just for the sheer hell of it) drew a shaky comparison that gave the competition exactly the right ammunition for painting his vision into a corner.

Arguably, it’s taken the Americans to win the war; it was ever thus. Ten years on and with quality issues resolved, HP acquired the Indigo brand and subsequently provided the corporate brawn to make it stick. Meanwhile, with brands juggling tight inventory levels and rapid response rates, the capability for messaging on the fly is just what the market wants.

From being dismissed as the clown prince at Ipex ’93, five shows later Benny Landa has been voted the industry’s first champion in print, and rightly so. Not the easiest of men with whom to work it must be said, but then charisma has always had its darker side.

For a whole host of reasons – technical and intellectual – packaging has benefitted through being a secondary extension of digital’s remit, but it’s a fair bet that it’ll become its most significant medium. Fast-forward another 16 years and a whole new generation of converters will give its application nary a second thought. Within an FMCG culture addicted to breaking news, topicality is the key to on-shelf differentiation. Get on the case now.

Des King is a freelance journalist specialising in packaging. He can be contacted by email at packagingnews.editorial@haymarket.com

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