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SFPNA Launches Online Comedy Shorts to Promote Paper

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Sappi Fine Paper North America (SFPNA), Boston, Mass., USA, this week released the Flo Channel: Off Register, its online comedy video series developed with VSA Partners, aimed at the print community. The new video series features stories told by Second City Improv that demonstrate the trials and tribulations of what printers encounter daily, as they aim to please their demanding, edgy-black-glasses-wearing clients.

The first kick-off video of the Off Register series is "Luscious," which tells the story of designer, Kat, trying to get Sully, the printer, to understand and produce for her a color that is not just pink but "luscious." Each video ends with an invitation: "Share your own outrageous printing story for a future episode of Off Register."

"Through our new Off Register video series, we are striving to illustrate to audiences how print can be integrated with digital to make a communications campaign have a more powerful impact," said Patti Groh, marketing director, SFPNA. "True, the campaign lives online, but its heart and soul reside on the pressroom floor," said Jonathan Turitz, VSA creative director.

The videos are pushed out to the primary audience of printers and press operators as part of an ongoing dialogue with Sappi and the promotion of its top-selling economy paper, Flo. Most paper company promo efforts utilize only print collateral, but Sappi believed it was necessary to break through the clutter with marketing that is multi-media based and engaging on many levels.

To demonstrate the potent digital/print relationship, SFPNA's Off Register campaign also utilizes e-blasts to printers to link them to the videos and QR codes that appear on printed collateral for Flo paper, which take smartphone users directly to the videos -- providing new ways for the target audience to interact with the series, as well as demonstrating how print is still a vital and dynamic medium when combined with digital media today.

The next video in the Off Register series, "Designer Disaster," will tell the story of a designer whose precious original art gets inadvertently destroyed. Both stories for the videos are based on submissions of actual events from printers and press operators.

Another campaign element of the Off Register marketing campaign is a commemorative series "Press Kit" (to be released late March). The Press Kit will further showcase the qualities of Sappi Flo paper and invites printers to continue the conversation, by submitting stories of their own for future episodes of the Off Register series to be released throughout the year.

 

Xerium Technologies, Inc.