Introducing India to interactive print: Blippar at Indian Magazine Congress

Blippar's co-founder and CMO Jessica Butcher joined the Blippar India team in Chennai to host a session about interactive print and augmented reality at the 9th Indian Magazine Congress.

This week saw Blippar India’s sponsorship of the 9th Indian Magazine Congress in Chennai – and a flying 24 hour visit from me to join the team at the event and deliver one of the speaking sessions on day two (from air-conditioned airport to air-conditioned conference venue and back to the airport again).

As a relative newcomer to India’s media landscape, this was a valuable opportunity for Blippar to understand more about the industry’s various challenges and concerns, plus their focus areas for the coming months. It was also a terrific change to listen to industry titans and stalwarts share their experience.

Blippar CMO Jessica Butcher on stage at the ninth Indian Magazine Congress in Chennai

And it turns out those challenges are far from local; India’s media industry faces the same global challenges our media partners everywhere are finding: how to think like a content business across multiple channels rather than in distinct terms of print and digital; how to monetise the digital sides of their businesses; how to think mobile in a rapidly evolving market. There were some signs of panic and concern around declining print revenues, but also much optimism for the opportunity that innovative multi-channel content presents.

What was encouraging for us was to see how unaware the audience was of augmented reality and interactive print as an exciting opportunity to bridge their print and digital assets. This provided us with a great opportunity to ‘wow’ them through interactive demos and the quantitative, exciting results from media partnerships that we’ve worked with in Europe and the USA.

Blippar bridges print media and digital by making print interactive, packing it with content which readers unlock using the Blippar mobile app

We talked at length with delegates about the opportunities for this technology to create reader engagement, drive advertiser opportunity and further realise the ROI on digital investment. There was also huge interest in the data and research implications of the technology which enable them to understand more about their readers, including when they’re reading their titles, where they’re located, what’s drawn their attention, for how long, and what actions they choose to take from the content delivered.

The newness of the technology to the market took me back to the early days of founding Blippar in 2011. (Truth be told, I’ve missed those delighted reactions from people experiencing the tech for the very first time!) It also presents us with a fabulous opportunity to hopefully help shape the print-reader’s interactive experience from the outset, and to encourage a cross-media, cross-advertiser browser approach to the technology from day one, rather than the per-title and print-only solutions that we suspect may concurrently start to creep into the market.

Huge thanks to Mitrajit Bhattacharya, R Rajmohan, Srinivasan B and Vidya Ramamurthy for making us feel welcome and supporting our logistical involvement in the event – we look forward to returning next year.