The company invited commercial and in-house printers to the two-hour forums where it presented the results of the company’s insight report, entitled The Bigger Picture: Your customers’ view of the value of print. The delegates then took part in an open discussion on the Drupa-launched report’s findings.

Michael Moradian, owner of Print Express, who attended the London forum, said Canon presented "meaty chunks of information" that smaller companies would not be able to access on their own.

"The Bigger Picture is an extremely useful piece of research because it gives you a better idea of what our customers are looking for and what the broad trends in the market are. I think that all suppliers in the industry should be engaging in this sort of activity because it makes the whole industry stronger," he added.

Mark Lawn, Canon’s UK & European marketing director, said that following the positive feedback from attendees he was looking at the possibility of creating a new programme of customer seminars and workshops in a similar vein to the forums next year.

While he stressed it was just an idea at the moment, he hinted that future forums would probably be focused on specific subjects, such as marketing, communication styles and return on investment. "We’d like to start with ROI," he added.  

Andy Harris, part of Canon’s European & UK graphic arts customer marketing team, said the recent events were open to any printers, whether they were Canon customers or not, and that this approach was something that the company would look to replicate at future events.

"We invited everyone who showed interest when the report went out, so there was a mix of clients and non-clients," he added.

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