O Boticário makes front page news with award-winning customised magazines

O Boticário wanted to celebrate 300 of its best sales associates with personalised magazines boasting a cover featuring each person’s photograph. It turned to marketing specialist, Air Promo and print service provider, Hellograf. Within 24 hours of each participant’s photo being taken, Hellograf used the HP Indigo 7500 Digital Press to print the magazines on special media with holographic effects.

Industry sector: Commercial; GCP

Brand name: O Boticário

Testimonial from: Marcelo Defante, Air Promo; Miguel Amaral, Hellograf

Print Service Provider: Hellograf

HP equipment: HP Indigo 7500 Digital Press

Website: boticario.com.br

https://www.boticario.com.br

This is an HP Indigo digital print.

Challenge

“ Our biggest challenge was to create 300 individual magazine covers for each sales associate within just 24 hours of taking the original photograph.” - Marcelo Defante, executive director, Air Promo

Showcasing talent – against the clock

Established in 1977, O Boticário is the largest cosmetic franchise in the world, with over 4,000 stores across Latin America, Europe and the US. Operating on a franchise model means relying on sales agents to promote products, therefore, O Boticário is always keen to praise and reward its leading sales associates.

Its annual conference is the perfect platform to celebrate O Boticário’s best and brightest talent. However, it wanted to go beyond a simple plaque or memento. In collaboration with local promotional marketing agency, Air Promo, the company decided to do something truly remarkable: create personalised magazines featuring the names and faces of the top 300 sales associates for distribution at the conference. However, there were only 24 hours to complete this ambitious project as the photos of each associate would be taken at the conference itself.

Not only did O Boticário want to create individually customised magazines, it also wanted to use holographical techniques for the cover to really make it stand out. It urgently needed a print platform that could provide variable data printing on a wide range of media. Traditional offset printing could never meet such tight deadlines and, moreover, would cost a huge amount. That’s when Air Promo picked up the phone to Hellograf.

Solution

“We printed on a special paper and applied golden holographical effects for 300 customised covers, which would not have been feasible without the HP Indigo 7500 Digital Press.” - Marcelo Defante, executive director, Air Promo

Fast, flexible, personalised prints

Based in Curitiba, Brazil, and founded in 1992, Hellograf is an award-winning, fast-growing print service provider. It recently invested in the HP Indigo 7500 Digital Press, the most flexible, technologically advanced high-volume sheet-fed digital printing solution on the market. This innovative machine also offers both variable data printing and the ability to print on hundreds of different substrates.

“HP technology allows us to print on new materials using variable data – meaning we can individually produce covers for each person without the costs associated with offset printing,” explains Miguel Amaral, digital director, Hellograf. “Whether it is PVC, Tyvek, plastic film or regular paper, it can handle it all, which means we can offer stunning effects, such as holographic lamination, even when printing short runs.”

When the O Boticário convention opened, the chosen delegates, known as ‘Botistars’, were invited to have their picture taken for use on the individualised covers. The expectation was the magazines would be ready for the second day – in reality, that meant a slim six-hour turnaround for Hellograf.

“The HP Indigo 7500 Digital Press has a very fast, agile workflow, which helped us take the photographs from the conference, mount them and print consistent covers for each of the 300 Botistars,” adds Amaral.

“With some hard work, we were able to produce the individual magazines and have them sent to the conference overnight, ready for presentation on the second day.”

Results

“The chosen sales associates were amazed by the surprise and felt like celebrities. We certainly couldn’t have produced the personalised covers and used the media we wanted without HP.” - Marcelo Defante, executive director, Air Promo

Award-winning, impactful marketing

The magazines were an instant success – both with the cover stars and O Boticário executives, who had worried that such a feat would be impossible to complete in such a limited timeframe.

“It had a tremendous impact and is a real game-changer for us in terms of leading the market,” continues Amaral. “Not only could we produce customised covers with special effects, but the speed and quality of the prints were unsurpassable. What makes it even more of a triumph is that we had only installed the HP Indigo 7500 one month previously, which shows how quickly we learned how to get the most out of the press.”

The quality and fast turnaround explain why this promotional campaign won the Publishing category at the 2019 Dscoop Inkspiration Awards. Some 200 entries, from more than 75 HP PSPs and designers, were submitted to the competition of works produced on HP Indigo, PageWide Web Press and Scitex print technology. This vibrant community of HP Graphics print service providers recognised how Hellograf and Air Promo had pushed the boundaries of what is possible with digital printing.

“We won because we really showcased the strong points of the HP Indigo: high speed, high quality variable data printing,” concludes Amaral.

“Winning such an award so soon after installing the HP Indigo 7500 Digital Press, and with little experience, was a big plus and opens the door to all kinds of projects, such as glitter calendars, menus, books and flyers. That’s why we have a 20% growth in revenue in 2019 based on around 400,000 HP Indigo prints per month.”

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4AA7-6674EEW, January 2020

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