The reality of a print PDF workflow

Bilka is one of Denmark's largest retail chains. For decades, Bilka has produced PDFs for printed catalogs.

Bilka’s PDF print workflow involves…

• Budgeting for the entire year
• Planning months in advance
• Working with an external agency
• Rounds of feedback and revisions

That workflow… well, it works, and has done so for many years. But it’s inflexible, time-consuming and hard to scale beyond already planned campaigns.

To get more value out of that workflow, Bilka put their PDFs online as interactive digital catalogs.

But those digital catalogs were always tied to the print workflow: Without a print PDF, and the workflow behind it, there would be no digital catalog.

Online shopping is always changing, and print PDFs can’t always keep up

Bilka knows that reacting to week-to-week changes in shopper needs and adjusting campaigns to new trends etc. is more important than ever.

And, sometimes, that reaction just can’t be planned months in advance for print PDFs: Shoppers, trends and the retail industry change too fast.

So, Bilka started looking for a more flexible way to react and create, publish and update digital catalogs in-house, independently from their print PDF workflow.

An automated digital catalog workflow with flexibility

Bilka started using Horizon to create automated digital catalogs from their product feed in a simple 3-step process:

Even after going live, the digital catalogs can always be changed in a few clicks to accommodate shopper behavior, weather changes etc.

This workflow makes Bilka’s digital catalog-creation standardised, fast and easy. And it can be done by anyone in the marketing team without external partners, months of planning and back-and-forths.

Whereas the creation of printed catalogs are handled by an external agency, with Horizon we can do it ourselves.”

More channels = more reach with less spend

But the output isn’t just a digital catalog for Bilka’s website. Bilka also generates a PDF from the Horizon catalog and distributes to online marketplaces and in their mobile app on equal terms with the PDFs from the print workflow.

This way, they can more reach shoppers organically with their extra campaigns without, for example, ‘buying’ the traffic to Bilka’s website through paid ads

“It’s a great opportunity to do more marketing and expand our reach  on different platforms.” - Morten Ellidshøj Fruergaard, Project Leader, Bilka

Marketing as it should be

Bilka can now plan and execute more relevant digital catalog campaigns themselves, and reach more shoppers online.

For example, Bilka’s new garden catalog: Would that digital catalog and campaign exist without Horizon?

"The short answer is no. We wouldn't have created the garden catalog if we couldn't produce it ourselves in Horizon. It does require some internal resources in terms of time, but Horizon gives us the freedom to quickly create campaigns when we see an opportunity.” -  Morten Ellidshøj Fruergaard, Project Leader, Bilka

For the garden catalog, Bilka simply saw an opportunity, and then they did it.

• No planning far ahead
• No agency necessary
• No extra budget

Just marketing as it should be: Spotting market opportunities, executing and distributing.

We can now do activities that we likely wouldn’t have prioritized or created through the traditional print process."