Page 17 - Print21 March-April 2020

People in print
While we sat for this interview, the impacts that Covid-19 would have on Australians, the industry and the world at large were not evident. Michael and the team at Ovato reached out and wanted to express their concern for those working across the industry, their families and the wider community.
volumes and better conditions everywhere. Now the focus is on achieving efficiencies and providing customers with better feedback on their investment in print.
“We’ve a lot to do in terms of helping our customers in the catalogue sector. We've got a role to play in helping them make smarter decisions; we’ve got to provide
them with data that allows them to justify continuing or increasing their spending in catalogues. Show them where they can put a catalogue to get a better, more certain, outcome. We can do it, we know how,” Hannan says.
Shipley, who casts the effect of catalogues on consumers as “cognitive priming,” backs this up. “We now have good sound proof using data, not people responding to a questionnaire, but proof on credit card spending at
a store and movement in a physical environment through mobile phone data, that shows people who get catalogues change their behaviours in favour of retailers that publish those catalogues.
“It’s a principle of cognitive priming. People are cognitively primed when they are thinking about buying but it’s
really hard to predict when and where those people are going to be. What the catalogue does well is achieve scale against that audience. Television builds brand awareness, catalogues harvest sales,” Shipley says.
According to Hannan, the rise of the catalogue sector can be traced to the changing business model of newspapers. He attributes much
of the growth of IPMG to meeting that gap in the market. “If I go
back to when we were building the IPMG business, it wasn’t done on the back of strong catalogue volumes. Supermarkets never did catalogues
in the 80s and 90s because there
were the afternoon Sun and Mirror newspapers around. On Wednesday the supermarkets took pages in them and when those newspapers crumbled, they came to us.
“Catalogues for us are the greatest and biggest growth sector. What we have to do is take the responsible view, minimise waste, show
clients how to get a better bang for their buck, how to create better catalogues, and how to get them into the hands of prospective clients without wasting their money.”
Left
Michael Hannan, chairman Ovato
Above
New manroland Lithoman 80-page press at Warwick Farm: a benchmark in print technology
Above left
The beginnings: Hannan Print in 1970 with a Goss Community press in Belmore Road, Randwick
Secrets of success
“Hard work, long hours, but above all relentless control of costs. You must be prepared to adapt and change and look for partners who can add value. I believe in building and maintaining a great customer service culture, which everyone needs to buy into. The balance of good gut instinct and backing it with financial analysis was critical in the longer term, though it is fair to say that our expansion in the early 1980’s carried a lot of gut feel and not so much of the analysis.”
What makes
Michael run?
“The print industry has never been an easy industry, but it’s been very rewarding over many years. Fear
of failure was highly motivational; being the biggest never motivated me, being the best did. In the 1980s every day was different with never a moment of boredom. We employed some great people and working with them has been a reward.”
Print21 MARCH/APRIL 2020 17