Two Sides will not be running its Power of Print conference in London this year. Instead the organisation advocating the continued use of print and paper against a digital onslaught, is planning a series of online webinars.
“While we had 170 attend last year, the challenge of getting people to spend time away from their offices and jobs has become too hard,” says Jonathan Tame. “However, when they do come, they love it.”
The event has been held at Stationers’ Hall at the start of November for 15 years. It draws an audience of printers, marketers and paper people to listen to presentations on successful marketing strategies using print, success in publishing and other high profile instances where print lifts a project. There is always sustainability angle to the event as befits the Two Sides manifesto.
“Two Sides is very much an international organisation and to have a physical event in London only did not reflect the membership very well,” says Tame. Online events would address this as Two Sides members and supporters from across Europe and beyond would be able to participate.
The exact content and format of the webinars has not been not settled, but will be in the coming weeks.
The decision reflects not on Two Sides but on the general difficulty of persuading people to leave their offices in order to attend a live in person event, something that has been a problem across the industry and beyond.
Two Sides itself is continuing to prove effective at tackling misleading statements about sustainability claims. It has persuaded 1,500 organisations worldwide to drop their green washing statements. Survey findings are that 56% of European consumers are aware that suggesting that environmental reasons for moving to digital communications are dishonest and that the motive is about saving costs.
The nature of false claims is changing too it says, explaining that some are saying that paper based packaging produced from trees from responsibly managed forests is less environmentally friendly than using alternative materials without the evidence to substantiate the claim.
