Impressions - Asides on offset and digital dialogue - All Comments

re: Print has still got wings

Mick Hart — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 14:25:00 GMT

The one thing going for air travel really is indeed its use of printed paper. Where would the be without branded napkins, paper food receptacles (I never flew 1st class) immigration papers and the emergency instructions. A laptop wouldnt be much use to throw up into either.....

re: Promoting print need promoting to printers

Russell Hicks — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 21:05:00 GMT

An interesting article, but does print really need a pan-European approach to promote itself? Surely every print company should be marketing its own capabilities to business areas that have a need for those services.

The benefits of print are manifold, and every print business should be aware of its own key selling points. Firstly, print is highly portable, and easy to distribute. Thinking along very simplistic lines: how about the distribution of a flyer for a rock concert – easy to hand out, easy to read by the recipient (no extra equipment needed, save perhaps for a pair of glasses in some cases!), and easy for the recipient to store (in a pocket) for future reference. Secondly, print has the ability to reproduce information in volume for a very low unit cost. No other communications media has this capability with regard to a physical piece of marketing or informative material. Thirdly, print has the ability to make other items easy to recognise. Imagine, for example, a tin of baked beans with no label – it becomes just a tin of something! Fourthly, it makes things attractive to look at, and indeed can make something desirable. The lure to many of buying a CD rather than downloading music is the attractiveness of the cover (for those of us of a certain age, it was the 12” cover of a vinyl record). Fifthly, print conveys information. Imagine purchasing medication without any instructions on how to take/apply the product?! Could be dangerous! Sixthly, print can be realistically personalised to create a document or publication with unique appeal to the recipient. Seventhly, print is tactile. You can introduce coatings and special finishes to help to convey a message, or simply to make the printed item more attractive or more interesting.

There. That's a few things to get you started! Now how to make those benefits count?

A few ideas: maximise sales to existing markets – what else can you do for customers that you already serve. Innovate – look to create new products for those existing markets. Innovate more! Create new products for new markets. Maybe you could look to specialise: what do you produce that you actually make good margins on – try to replicate that by doing more of the same. Diversify – what else can you do because you print – publishing is one obvious example; print businesses also have some of the best and most knowledgeable IT people on the planet – can you sell their services in other areas? Is your business in the right shape to serve the customer effectively – many printers now look to have customer support representatives rather than a multitude of sales people – office bases specialists that know how the company works and know the needs of the customer. Are you making the most of the web? The web might be seen by many as prints greatest enemy, but in fact it can offer printers a great deal of help if used correctly.

For further thoughts e-mail russ.hicks@genesis-marketing.com

Russ Hicks

Genesis Marketing

re: Further Fuji news shows the inkjet challenge is bigger than B2

Matthew Parker — Thu, 29 May 2008 07:03:10 GMT

With all the excitement of digital, it's important not to forget the anicolour presses. I have found that these can challenge digital for non personalised print (there is still quite a lot of it around!) down to very low runs. I will be very interested to see what happens when a B2 version of this technology comes out.

Matthew Parker

www.printandprocurement.com

re: Can Kodak's customers emulate its marketing move?

Amar Eshwar — Thu, 22 May 2008 18:16:16 GMT

Kodak offers great print solutions and has wide reach in the Global Market. Its indeed a great move from Kodak to provide Digital Asset Management. With the tremendous Global needs, a service like this helps in project tracking and useful up to the minute process information in both web based and printable formats.

Hope this service can be utilised by various sectors like Pharmaceutical, Food & Beverage, Automotive and Consumer Packages for their convenience.

re: When suppliers move from offering kit to custom

Matthew Parker — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:06:30 GMT

It will be interesting to see what happens to Omnicom's print prices. I suspect they may rise a little but that their cost of acquisition will reduce. This seems to be further proof that intelligent sellers are looking at print as a service and not a commodity.

Matthew Parker

www.printandprocurement.com

re: Can Kodak's customers emulate its marketing move?

Matthew Parker — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 11:00:25 GMT

I know of at least one printer that has dropped print from their name and is broadening their offering. Digital asset management is an excellent service for a printer to offer: it will make the effort of change much harder. Sadly, I agree with Barney's friend: many printers will concentrate on treating print as a commodity and continue to get hammered on profits.

Matthew Parker

www.printandprocurement.com

re: Can Kodak's customers emulate its marketing move?

Nigel Cliffe — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:38:05 GMT

Hats off to Kodak for such a forward thinking strategy. Who could have imagined the turnaround in a 'metal' company to be paving the way for printers of the future. And that's the point really, only the printers of the future will see it this way. Printers have to see that putting ink on paper is only part of their portfolio of services to clients. Total communications strategies have to be in the tool kit. I wonder if we need to start dropping the word 'print' from our core offering, but what else might we call ourselves? Now there's a question....

re: Scents and sellability

Matthew Parker — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:34:18 GMT

Anyone buying scented print needs to be very careful! I have seen a lot of disappointed marketing people expecting some rather different smells to those they received. And the minimum manufactured quantity required for a bespoke smell (sorry - scent!) can be frightening!

Matthew Parker

www.printandprocurement.com

re: The benefit of brandishing a green badge

Matthew Parker — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 18:41:09 GMT

If print and paper want to prove a good news story regarding the environment it might be interesting to consider measuring the carbon footprint of a magazine versus a website, over the entire lifecycle of both products. I believe that the carbon footprint of a website would surprise many people...

Matthew Parker

www.printandprocurement.com

re: Time to put training further up our to-do list

Matthew Parker — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:17:13 GMT

The industry also needs to realise the growing lack of knowledge that exists among clients, and to deal with it! Teaching clients to specify print and paper correctly will ensure that the estimating team becomes more efficient. Teaching clients how to manage suppliers correctly will mean a more appropriate flow of information and less problems that are so avoidable if only everyone had communicated correctly.

One other thought: there is a lot of talk about training print apprentices. But many production and management teams at printers should consider some basic generic training. Negotiation training for printers can make a large difference to profit margins. Often I find it leads to a re-evaluation of sales proposals as well.

Matthew Parker

www.printandprocurement.com

re: Is the iPhone set to become the iBook?

will pollard — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 14:58:58 GMT

I have taken out a paragraph for my blog.

Hope that's ok.

My point is that this is a bit different to the review of the Amazon Kindle. Why should that be?

re: A stitch inline saves…

Marten Dahlstedt — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 09:50:16 GMT

All newspaper presses can be equipped with our stitchers, so there is actually no reason for the newspapers not to start stitching. The stitching trend is very strong many countries such as in Holland, France and the Scandinavian countries, but is now really taking off all over UK.