2011 Hot Markets : Demand for Print to Rise

Up! That is not a misprint. There will be a slight appreciation in real pricing and raw demand for our medium in the New Year. A GDP of $15.4T will support nearly $204B of print. Where? In a 7/4/31 combination that will constitute more business than the combined balance at 18/6/7 of all print. Success will depend on disciplined concentration, restructuring, downsizing and, yes, relocation to optimize this funnel structure. Are you ready?

Seven of the Top 25 categories will demand 4 percent to 8 percent more print in 2011, while the remaining 18 will level or reduce print spends. The four principal products will be smart-and-green packaging, very large-format digital/screen, interactive litho/digital direct response and cross-media combinations of every variety. What's in your pressroom, and where are your salespeople?

At No. 1, dishing out the most print demand in history, will be packaged foods ($1.04T, +12 percent; with more than $15.9B to print, +5 percent). Food inflation will continue to gobble up discretionary consumer income, and top producers like Kraft (+26 percent) and Tyson (+12 percent) will defensively increase ROP, free-standing insert and in-store promotional printing as prices rise.

Stale participants like Campbell's (-1 percent) will advertise to regain category shares lost to a bowlful of new entrants, mostly offshore/onshore producers and domestic acquirers of small, ethnic food producers like B&G Foods (+23 percent).

Get into smart packaging with nanotech features; a new reality with ink and substrate combinations that are sensitive to touch, static, lighting, sound and temperature—both in and out of the box, bottle or can. Few plants have the know-how and licenses for these processes, so customer demand and print profits will be greater than available supply.

Even tastier will be cross- media couponing using smart phone-reading barcodes that will populate decals, labels, FSIs, floor-art, samples and direct mail at 10-times last year's rate.

To accompany the victuals are No. 6-ranked beverages ($448B, +11 percent; with $10.7B to print, +8 percent) and No. 17-ranked food service ($748B, +5 percent; with $5.2B to print, +2 percent). Downstream acquisitions of their respective bottlers by Pepsico (+40 percent) and Coca Cola (+12 percent) will dramatically increase market concentration and pricing power; good for metal decoration, screen, outdoor and POS/POP.

Expect more event-driven and "spontaneous" viral marketing such as those of Red Bull (+18 percent), which are rich in large-format, sublimation and litho print. Similar celebration initiatives by wines and spirits producers, and distributors such as Diageo (+20 percent), are pouring up demand with new flavored offerings.

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