Power of Print 2025 Summary

Two Sides’ annual one-day conference was a rousing blend of industry trends, marketing insights, packaging solutions and champions of sustainability.

If there was a theme to the 2025 Power of Print conference, it would be trust. Whether it was Eve Stansell, Planning Director at Royal Mail Marketreach, explaining why mail is a powerful weapon for increasing consumer trust in a brand, or Trewin Restorick, the Founder of sustainability solutions company Sizzle, talking about the tangibility and authenticity of print, trust was the watchword of the day.

A £14bn Industry

The 2025 Two Sides conference was the 15th time more than 200 industry leaders had gathered in Stationers’ Hall in London to listen and network, sharing knowledge and their experience of working in print, packaging, marketing and sustainability. As the first speaker of the day walked on stage, there was a keen sense of fascination of what was to come.

Charles Jarrold, CEO of the BPIF, delivered an upbeat view of the UK printing industry, with an estimated 2026 turnover of £13.7bn – the fifth largest in the world. “Employing around 93,000 people in 6,800 companies, the UK printing industry remains an important economic contributor and employer in all UK regions,” he stated.

Regarding industry trends, there’s a real sense of positivity, with output, orders, confidence and exports all increasing, and packaging showing a real upward trend in terms of turnover. However, there are a number of concerns, such as competitor pricing, wage pressures and the loss of clients.

The Trust Factor

Trust formed a significant part of the joint presentation by Ben Briggs and Tom Ridges, Managing Partner at Join the Dots and Founder of Herdify respectively. Their businesses deal in the use of behavioural data to reveal the hidden networks that drive decisions, then using that insight to create measurable media strategies, so people’s trust in print is a powerful way to capitalise on that insight.

According to Ridges, advocacy is key to a successful sales strategy, with 89% of consumers trusting word-of-mouth, making consumers five times more likely to make a purchase and spend 16% more. By using targeted up-to-date data and a highly creative mail campaign, brands can reach the right people and get the right results.

The huge potential for brands that mail offers was explored in more detail by Eve Stansell from Royal Mail Marketreach, who unveiled the results of the company’s latest research into trust. With six out of ten people stating that trust is an important factor when choosing a brand or organisation, it’s clearly an essential part of customer communications. And when taken with the fact that 92% of consumers will ‘act’ or ‘do something’ if they trust a brand, it becomes crucial.

Stansell went on to explain how brands can build trust, with mail a key part of the solution. According to Marketreach research, mail has the biggest impact on trust in communications – double that of the next closest channel, social media – and is the most trusted media of all channels.

Print’s Potential For Sales And Emotion

Following a short networking break, Jon Bickley, the CEO of Anthem Publishing, explained how his company focused on print magazines to grow the business. His love of print magazines was obvious as he spoke about the engagement they offer and their potential for reaching a dedicated audience.

Citing the increase in popularity of vinyl (“Increased by 650% in 10 years”) and the enduring popularity of print books (“They make up 89% of all UK sales”), Bickley explained how the company began to produce quick-turnaround magazines and one-off publications based on the latest trends and developments in technology, culture and music. They even found a lucrative sales avenue in newsstand colouring books. Boosting both sales and revenue, this is clearly a success story for print publishing, with Bickley concluding that “there is real opportunity with print for publishers to be bold.”

The ability of print to engage and connect with people was at the heart of the next presentation, given by Clive Booth. The photographer and Canon Europe ambassador provided expert insight into his latest project, The Silence After Applause’, in which he shot a series of portraits of dancers from Birmingham Royal Ballet as they come off stage.

As well as the portraits themselves, Booth showed the conference audience the images of the dancers looking at their portraits once they had been printed, which demonstrated the power of print to stimulate a range of emotions.

The Sniff Test

The first speaker of the afternoon was Simon Harrop, Founder of The Aroma Company, who spoke about how adding sensory impact to print materials can boost engagement, memory and emotional impact. Citing a quote by renowned marketing expert Robert Passikoff, who said, “The decision process in brand adoption, engagement and loyalty is 70% emotional,” Harrop provided evidence to show that touch, smell and even taste are just as valuable as sight and sound when it comes to marketing. The conclusion was that the more senses are engaged, the more effective the marketing, making print the idea vehicle for marketing messages.

Following Harrop, linking print to digital was the central theme of Greg Brooks’ presentation. The Chief Marketing & Commercial Officer of connected experiences platform io.tt spoke about the evolution of print and how new digital technology can enhance its capabilities for brands, generating value through data capture and owned media. This can be achieved through the use of QR codes, NFC, AR and other digital technology to enable each physical item to become a unique, interactive touchpoint.

The Sustainability Superpower

Titled ‘The Good, the Fad and the Ugly’, Roger Wright’s presentation provided a run-down of the current waste management system and the importance of “The five c’s: context, condition, contamination, communication and consistency” when it comes to recycling. The Waste Strategy & Packaging Manager at Biffa then explained what it takes to be a good piece of packaging – to be accessible, standardised and redesigned – before moving through the potential fads, such as paper bottles and compostable packaging, and ‘the ugly’. Examples of poor packaging included the poorly conceived, such as some toy packaging, the complex, such as multi-material cartons, and the dangerous, such as packaging that could be polluting.

As one of the last presenters of the day, the Founder of sustainability solutions company Sizzle, Trewin Restorick, offered a socio-political assessment of the last seven years, taking us back to 20218 when he last presented at the Power of Print conference. Over those seven years, Restorick stated that sustainability has been under attack, with the pandemic, global instability, conflict and fractured supply chains combining to create a political and business backlash against efforts to achieve net zero.

So what should be done? Restorick outlined the importance of building operational resilience against weather-related impacts as well as water and energy dependence, alongside the opportunity for print to play a part in this sustainable revolution. It can do this by being a key element of the circular economy, creating high value, sustainable products and offering trust in a world of digital scepticism.

In his final slide, Restorick stated that “The future of print is resilient, authentic and circular,” which provided a fitting rallying call for the assembled industry leaders.

To listen to the 2025 Power of Print presentations, go to twosides.info/power-of-print-2025