Print Island: “A New Format for Print Media”

Can you introduce yourself and how you became involved in the print industry?

My claim to fame since 2014 has been that I created the online ‘ShareaCoke’ campaign for Coca-Cola, delivering millions of personalised bottles of Coke across Europe. This was followed by many more personalised campaigns for major brands around the world.

This brought me in contact with the printing industry as an event speaker and commentator on personalisation, and I never left. It led directly to me creating the Personalisation Experience for FESPA, Edge TV for DSCOOP, and talking at many of the major trade shows around the world.

What is Print Island and what is its purpose in the industry?

Print Island is a bold new space created ‘by the industry, for the industry’. Is it a TV show? A live event? A community? The answer is all of the above and more.

The idea came about when I noticed how innovative and technically brilliant the industry is, but how bad it can be at communicating that brilliance beyond its own shores. So I dreamt up the concept of Print Island as a metaphor, as an enclave where printers can talk to printers around the world about that brilliance – but because it’s on YouTube, the whole world will get to know.

What type of content can people expect to see from Print Island?

We are made by printers, for printers, and so felt that our content should communicate openly and honestly about the challenges and solutions that we all face and create. Rather than just hearing sales and marketing talk, we wanted to talk about the industry as it is – a bit like the conversations we all have at the bar at the end of a trade show day.

We have created a global network of ‘avengers’ and correspondents in every region who each have decades of hands-on experience in the industry and can talk plainly, authentically, and honestly about the industry without any need for marketing guff.

We believe this openness is a new format for print media and hopefully will allow a printer in Arkansas to see a printer in Singapore using the same hardware or software as they do, but doing things differently. The industry is 24/7/365, but the sun never sets on Print Island.

Are you aiming to foster collaboration through Print Island?

Having been an external speaker in the industry for over 10 years, I’m constantly amazed by the willingness of printers to collaborate – but that only seems to happen at trade shows. That is an expensive route to collaboration and with the world as it is, we wanted to present an alternative – an open global dialogue and community-based approach for a low cost of subscription, with no requirement to travel from your office or home to join in.

You can expect a safe and open space to discuss the industry as it is, as well as a place to both learn and teach. It will be interactive for printers around the world to share their views and get feedback from their peers. We will not be sponsored by the major manufacturers, so the opinions are not rooted in sales and, a bit like Top Gear, the content will be hosted by lovers of print who aren’t afraid to be honest about what they see in the market.

How does this project reflect how modern printers may interact with the media?

Print Island is a platform for printers to learn more about how their global colleagues in the industry work, as well as to think and gain insights into modern practices. Printers don’t just want the headlines about how AI is going to change everything, but to understand how it can help them in every facet of their business – not just printing for example.

Now let’s be honest – if we want to attract young people into the industry, we need to talk their language: the language of YouTube, Tik Tok, and so on. Print Island will let those young people know that the print industry is actually the tech industry – it just doesn’t know it yet.

Anything else to add?

We are at the start of the journey. Our first episodes are available online on our website, giving a sense of what we are planning for Print Island. But as the weeks go by and new episodes and bonus content drops, we will build out the content for subscribers with deep dive product reviews that are non-vested, as well as extended interviews with the sort of people you don’t get to hear from at trade shows. It is designed to allow subscribers to stay bang up to date with the industry anywhere in the world, and all of this is for less than the price of a weekly coffee.