When you look back at the old method of taking photos and getting them developed it’s hardly surprising we embraced digital photography with an almost embarrassing eagerness. Whereas before we were restricted to a paltry 24 or 36 shots before needing to send the film off to a lab, with no guarantee of quality, we can now snap and review hundreds of photos on small, lightweight digital cameras, edit them and upload the best ones to a web-to-print supplier for output.

And print them we do. Harrier LLC, which produces photos for ordering sites such as Truprint, Tesco and Boots, processed 100m photos in 2011, and this growth shows no sign of diminishing, according to Julian Marsh, commercial business development and photo products consultant at the company.

"There’s a growing awareness about photo products now, from standard photos to photobooks and mugs and other items. Calendars are always popular too. We expect to print some 400,000 in the run up to Christmas this year," he says.

Marketers and businesses are catching on to this rapidly growing demand for photo products and are beginning to tap into the affection associated with photos, but the highly personal nature of the product can create some challenging data issues. Nevertheless, some are managing it.

One business that has certainly benefited from the desire for glossy prints and products is Photobox.

Formed in 2000, the firm has been going strong ever since; by 2010, the company was turning over £72m and processing a staggering 1m prints per day, which resulted in the shipping of over 1m photobooks. Last year, it also moved into the personalised greetings cards market with the acquisition of Moonpig.com for £120m.

This growth has come despite competition from digital photo frames, which perhaps logically should be the final destination for our digital snaps. However, Photobox managing director Lawrence Merritt doesn’t believe our love of printed photos is going to dissipate any time soon.

"Photos are taken as a celebration of a moment, not to be left trapped behind a screen. Digital screens are a great product, but not one that’s revolutionary," he says.

This is a sentiment Gary Blissett from bookbinder and photobook specialist Blissett Photobooks echoes, likening the continued demand for printed photos to that of real books, despite the growth of devices such as the Kindle from Amazon or Sony eReader for reading electronic books.

"There’s a perceived value to photographs – they’re tactile and exist in real-life, rather than just on a digital screen. Photobooks let you create and design something that’s made up of your own memories that you can look at and enjoy whenever you want," he says. "This is also a security thing. Having the photos printed means they’re safe and can be passed on, whereas there’s always the risk they could be lost if your camera, or iPhone or laptop is damaged or stolen."

The firm is also seeing many customers ask to have old, traditional photo albums turned into photobooks, not only to ensure the older photos survive, but also to let them create multiple copies that can be given to different members of the family.

B2B market
However, while photobooks remain a popular consumer-oriented product, the business world is catching on and Blissetts is seeing a growing demand for high-end corporate photo products.

"Companies often want a high-quality photobook to record an event they put on, or to send to clients, or even to form the basis of a presentation to a potential customer," he explains.

"There’s far more of a perceived value than just leaving behind some leaflets or brochures that are often just thrown away or ignored."

This is something Harrier’s Marsh agrees with, saying there’s definitely an opportunity for brands to make more use of photobooks.

"If you’re selling a house or a top-of-the-range car or offering an amazing holiday that costs a lot of money, then using a
photobook could be a much better way of promoting it. It’s a nicer product and people are more likely to keep hold of it and look at it repeatedly," he argues.

While photobooks are perhaps the headline product people can buy, other items such as key rings, mugs, phone covers and calendars that can all be personalised are growing in popularity.

"Everyone is different and, therefore, have different requirements so it’s important that we cater for that," explains Merritt. "One person may want to create a photobook while someone else might want to print one photograph in particular on something cool such as an acrylic block or key ring or an iPhone cover – we try to make sure we cover all bases."

For marketers, this interest in personalised products represents an excellent opportunity and one that major brands are cottoning on to, as Gary Peeling, managing director at Precision Printing, explains.

"A simple but powerful example of how big brands are looking to tap into this is the new campaign from Barclays that allows customers to personalise their debit cards with their own pictures. The project understands the appetite individuals have for this type of service," he explains.

Barclays managing director of current accounts, Dan Wass, told PrintWeek that introducing personalised debit cards was about giving customers the chance to create a debit card "totally unique" to them and is already proving popular.

"The response to our personalised debit cards has been fantastic. Customers are really connecting with the idea and take-up is growing rapidly," he says. "Almost anything is possible – the face of a loved one, a favourite holiday destination or even the family pet, adding an image that’s personal to you couldn’t be easier, bringing some added fun to spending money."

Emotional connection
Barclays is not alone in realising that letting customers personalise products with photos could increase loyalty and brand engagement. Peeling says many of his customers are carrying out similar projects. One involves a major credit card provider that’s looking to offer customers vouchers as a loyalty gift so they can create personalised calendars.

"Offering something of this nature means the customer will have an emotional connection with the marketing they produce themselves as it will feature images of friends, family, holidays and so forth – it becomes less about the brand and more about them."

Of course, another benefit of this is that rather than providing a gift that will be used once and forgotten, such as a money-off voucher, something like a calendar is used for an entire year, providing a much longer value to the promotion.

While such projects are starting to take off, the notion of creating bespoke marketing based on our love of photography could well increase in the future thanks to Facebook. The social networking giant hosts more photographs than anywhere else in the world and revealed in February in a pre-stockmarket flotation filing that it now processes the upload of 250m snaps per day.

Unsurprisingly, marketers are relishing the potential opportunities this could offer to create highly specific, personalised campaigns, as Peeling explains.

"Businesses could create marketing that utilises people’s photos from their social media profiles – provided of course that customers allow them access to their data. Of course, this will only happen if they see a benefit in doing so and are not bombarded by irrelevant offers and advertising," he says. "You’d have to deliver content that offers something of value and enhances their relationship with a brand rather than harming it. Consumers are conscious about who has access to their data, and they won’t allow access unless they are getting something they value and if they trust the brand it’s coming from."

Of course, getting it wrong could produce some truly dire consequences, as head of marketing DST Output UK Fraser Church warns.

"While the technology exists for us to obtain and repurpose imagery and content from the public domain, we must be wary about how individuals may appreciate it being used," he explains. "The excuse of obtaining permissions must not override the fact that an individual may not be best pleased by the outcome of a company’s best intentions. We must always be aware that a perceived faux pas can spread like wild-fire in the world of social media and easily tarnish a brand."

Nevertheless, done right, Peeling suggests such marketing campaigns could prove hugely popular and drive customers’ loyalty and help brands increase and retain online followers.

"What you could have in the future is a situation where people receive personalised print products based on their own social media data, which if they find engaging, they’ll then talk about online, thereby creating a viral effect and increasing both online and offline engagement with the brand involved."

While for some the idea of finding a photo of themselves staring up from the doormat when they get home may seem disconcerting, it’s not hard to imagine that younger audiences could well find this sort of marketing highly engaging. It’s certainly something to think about the next time you upload your photos after a family holiday or night out with friends to Facebook.