The printing press industry was hit hard during the 2020 pandemic. Reading newspapers and magazines has already been on the decline for years. However, not everything about the printing press is reading. The 2020 pandemic (and our moveable lifestyle) pushed people to shop online. Packing slips, labels, and address stickers are all still physical things that need to be printed. Today, printing press industries are focused on adding value to the packaging process, such as e-commerce driven connections.
In 2019, Burger King Brazil released the “Burn That Ad” campaign. Point your phone at a Burger King competitor’s ad and it goes up in flames (via augmented reality). [32] In return, people who burned the competitors’ ads got a free Whopper. This is one example of how augmented reality has already been changing the print industry.
Billboards, magazines, and packaging are all produced with aspects of the printing press. Physical ads are being replaced with digital ones. In the future, code will be printed into physical media to keep it from being augmented.