Winning at Print in a Digital World

The subject of the robustness of print in the increasingly digital world has been the topic of many articles, posts and conversations. The printing industry has bad public relations folks (except, perhaps, Jeff Hayzlett, who unfortunately has moved on to bigger and better industries ), so we always end up looking bad. Even though our industry is ten times bigger globally than online advertising, we get little respect. Print most certainly is not dead, but I think everyone in the industry realizes that certain applications have been wounded, and some of them mortally. 

Recently, Whattheythink.com ran an interview by Patrick Henry with Joel Quadracci , Chairman, President and CEO of Quad/Graphics, Inc. The headline read "Redefining Print: Joel Quadracci Discusses Quad/Graphics and the View from the Industry’s Front Ranks".  I can't effectively link it here, because it's premium content, but you can visit the Whattheythink site and subscribe or buy access if I entice you enough by providing a flavor of Mr.Quadracci's talk track here. 

Said Quadracci, near the end of the interview after briefly touching on some forays into QR codes and other digital technologies, "Yes, we are printers, absolutely, and the stuff that we’ve migrated into is a result of being a printer, not because we’re trying to get away from print. But we believe that the more we can impact how print is used in a multichannel world, we’ll make the overall product that much stronger."

To pause and analyze this for a second, it sounds to me like he's admitting that Quad is a printer.  This is awesome.  Many printers today are so afraid to describe themselves as having anything to do with print that when you read their websites, you will have absolutely no idea what they do. So, I think this admission is very healthy for a company that makes the majority of its revenue from printing.

Then, Quadracci goes on to say, "The whole digital space for us, as a part of our company, is never going to be bigger than the print side, because of revenue differences. But it’s probably one of the most important things to make the core product very healthy."

I am not saying that Quad Graphics is as old fashioned as a Letterpress. Quite the contrary, they are absolutely "state of the art" in terms of printing capabilities.

This, I interpret to mean, "OK, other people own the distribution of published materials and advertising online, and we can't compete with them." (my quote, not his.) That seems kind of like giving up to me, like when Offset took over from Letterpress, some people decided not to buy new equipment. They continued to operate for awhile, but then the business went elsewhere. Also sounds like the continuing health of print is today, and more in the future, derived largely from complementing it with digital technologies.  We'll get back to that later, agreed.

Finally, the interview is wrapped up with the following thought from Quadracci, "And then, we’ll continue to migrate where we migrate. We got into some packaging. We got into healthcare only because we became good at something."  I find this a bit alarming. We have heard this from many printers in the past, and in many cases it is thinking like this that causes flat line or declining revenue. To me, this means: instead of promoting innovation in our culture, we get our product development ideas from customers. When they say jump, we say "how high". Obviously, we need to provide solutions for our customers problems.  Customers bring us opportunities.  Don't forget that no matter how great our relationship with the customer is, they are definitely talking to other Printers, too.  Because there are too many of us. So we need to innovate to get customers to buy from us, instead of competitors (whether inside, or outside of, our industry).

Healthy Attitude or Admission of Failure?

Quad is a venerable industry company, the world's second largest printing company.  They've been around for a long time, they are really good at Print. For customers who are both using digital marketing tactics, and doing business with traditional industry companies, Print is really hard. Print is really slow. Print is not very measurable, versus digital (although there are some techniques that can enhance the ability to measure its effectiveness that few printing companies practice.)

It has become very clear that we are never going to make print as easy, cheap and measurable as the marketing capabilities newer digital technologies now offer our customers. But we should try. We should try to make print as easy as it can be, do it faster, with less machinations, and make it as measurable as it can be.

The combination of print and digital is strong, as Quadracci mentions when he says making print work in a multichannel world strengthens the overall product-- presumably describing the effectiveness of a campaign or the uptake of a publication by its readership, resulting in success criteria being met by Quad's customer.

  

Print in a Digital World

In today’s measurable marketing world, with more channels and more data, what marketers need is to understand the customer and what they are doing across all of the channels of experience that are available to them. Marketers need to understand what the customer wants, and what their intentions are-- so they can attract them, build interest and ultimately convert them.

What is your relevance in a world that is
focused on business intelligence, analytics, and applications enabled by Big Data?

Marketers today speak a language that Printers, for the most part, do not understand.  But still, they are overwhelmed with marketing automation technologies that have become essential, but which in many cases they do not fully understand. Often times today, interns are operating these important new technologies, because "digital natives" instinctively "get" the functionality, and know how to apply these tools (but in many cases only to address limited business needs.) The focus is on the the click, the open, and the conversion. Very necessary, but limited. In many cases, the digital marketing technology is just plain too hard to operate. Add Print into the mix, and try to execute a multi-channel campaign with multiple online and offline vendors, and things become very cumbersome.

These conditions are putting tremendous pressure on marketing teams and skill sets. Because Sales is under more pressure than ever, they are more demanding of marketing than ever. Many people in our customer’s organizations have not yet caught up. We can be the ones to help, by managing data, analytics, content, and providing a great customer experience. Everyone is talking about the “customer journey”, but the fact is most Printers and Digital Marketing service providers can’t deliver even campaign execution via their web interfaces. 

Instead of trying to stitch disparate applications together, marketers need an integrated platform that lets them deliver customer experiences across the web, email, mobile and print--  and to better manage and measure campaigns. We hear the buzzwords of "Big Data", and it's true-- marketers of any scale absolutely need Big Data. In fact, Quadracci talked about Big Data in the interview, too, and erroneously asserted that Printers had been doing this for a long time.  In fact, printers have only been on the "output end" of what I would call "Small Data". Data that drives simple personalization, versioning and tailored pricing and availability differences across geographic footprints is not Big Data. What Big Data brings to the marketer is an aggregate data platform that understands the individual customer and lets her use that information across every one of your touch points, in many cases predicting behavior that the customer himself does not see in their future. 

There are no "web-to-print" solutions on the market today that do these things effectively. There are some that have digital (i.e., email) and print capabilities, but they are very limited. Some, however, are thinking about this new world. A new generation of Web-to-Print systems will bring these solutions to the customer. In addition, some of the marketing automation companies are getting more involved in print applications, because they are now starting to see Print as a tool to differentiate themselves in a crowded landscape of competitive technologies. 

It's a tremendous opportunity. Who is going to capitalize on it? Who should be bringing this to the customer? The marketing automation providers, or the Printers? Or the guys who used to be printers?  It is your decision.

Printing in the Blue Ocean

The idea of “Blue Ocean” and the strategy behind it is incredibly appropriate for the printing industry. Most printers live in the “Red Ocean” today, and are greatly suffering (and many continue to disappear) because of their inability to get out of it.

Blue Ocean is a term coined by the prolific authors, professors and business theorists W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne in their book "Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant" (2005).

If you are in the printing industry, and are not familiar with Blue Ocean, I would highly recommended putting in some late summer reading— it’s a quick read, unlike many business books. A lot of people throw the term around loosely, but if you study it closely, it really is among the best of many popular business ideas that have emerged in the last 20 years or so.

The theory goes that in an established industry, companies compete with each other for every piece of available market share. The competition is so great that some firms cannot sustain themselves and stop operating. This is the state of companies living in the Red Ocean (as in blood red.)  At the risk of sounding obvious, firms in the printing industry are in this Red Ocean. There are many thousands of companies that are almost indistinguishable from one another.

The book contains several fantastic case studies of firms who clearly differentiate in core ways. These are firms who, by innovating and creating great differentiation, find their way into the Blue Ocean, where no firms operate, allowing the company to expand without competition. Examples in the book include Cirque du Soleil and Southwest Airlines. In the case of Southwest, at this point they’ve been copied by dozens of other companies… but they took many years to emerge, during which the company profited immensely.  In the case of Cirque, they arguably have remained alone in their unique market.

From the Cirque du Soleil film, World's Away, photo credit: Mark Fellman, Paramount Pictures

Some might think it is a stretch to compare printing to a circus, but there actually are parallels. The circus business, pre-Cirque, was in long-term decline. Alternative forms of entertainment—sporting events, TV, and video games—were casting a growing shadow. This is similar to what is happening to print in the face of digital media. Children preferred video games to circus acts. Marketers prefer digital media now, due to faster cycle times, lower costs and measurability.

An industry beset by decreasing audiences and increasing costs. In printing’s case, even without increasing costs, we are faced with price competition from weak and desperate direct competitors as well as from the easier and less costly digital media alternatives.

Interestingly, a new entrant to the printing industry would have a tough time in face of the existing competition, just like Cirque faced a challenge competing against the incumbent Ringling Brothers, who for most of the last century had set the industry standard. Cirque created uncontested market space that made the competition irrelevant. It pulled in a whole new group of customers who were traditionally non-customers of the industry—adults and corporate clients who had turned to theater, opera, or ballet and were, therefore, prepared to pay several times more than the price of a conventional circus ticket for an unprecedented entertainment experience.  

Southwest Airlines strategy, as articulated in the book, was not to compete head on for traffic from existing airline customers, but to go after people who normally could not afford to fly—to compete for business normally owned by bus and car travel instead. 

Both companies created new demand for their products. I can think of only a handful of companies in the printing industry who have taken this kind of approach.  There are a couple of ubiquitous examples who are "online printing companies”, or companies who solely do business on the internet, but whose products are tangible, print or print-related. There are also “brick and mortar” printing industry companies who have made the swim into the beautiful Blue Ocean of profits and growth.  

Can you name any of them?

Vistaprint

Recently, a partner company we are working with at SR tried to compare us to Vistaprint in a slide deck talking about an upcoming project.  They got the comparison completely wrong. In fact, there is no comparison to made between our two companies, whatsoever. When I worked at Mimeo, people were always trying to compare us to VistaPrint, too-- also two companies that could not be more different.  The only thing the three of us have in common is that we do manufacture print, and we all do business via the Internet.  It's like comparing Yahoo, Google and AOL... there are certainly dummies out there who think those three companies are roughly the same.  But those who are students of the Internet know they could not be less similar.

I am a big fan of what Vistaprint has done. Even without the aforementioned ignorant comparisons, this is a company that is really misunderstood inside and outside the industry.  Here is an answer I just wrote for Quora. Since many of my friends and colleagues don't "do Quora" (yet), I thought I'd push it over here as well. It's about one of the differentiating factors that Vistaprint possesses.  Though actually, both SR and Mimeo have great power in this area, albeit serving different markets and using different techniques and technologies.

Is there anything unique about Vistaprint's actual printing process that enables it to print more efficiently than others?

There are several things that make them unique.  

The printed products they produce are constrained in shape, size, material and graphic layout.  They offer these discrete products only via the web.  Most printers, in contrast, attempt to print virtually any shape and size. 

The reason they can do this, unlike other printers is because they have a laser-like focus on their target market.  They test when they add new products, and they know people will buy them. So they can invest in the automation to produce those products.

Their equipment is deployed and used in a standardized way across their manufacturing footprint, and they've automated processes to the point where all the "manual" tasks are cleverly prescribed and performed by the minimum number of humans. For example, when producing business cards, the person who loads paper onto the press is also the person pulls the trigger on the imaging of the next set of printing plates for the press.

The automation results in few touches.  They run multiple customers jobs together, and then cut and sort them, and send them down conveyor belts to a logistics area where they will await other order items, or simply address them and send them to the trucks waiting to send them on their way to the customer. Practically no one in the printing industry has this level of automation across jobs.  Only elite printing companies have this kind of automation for single jobs, for single customers.

They also have some patents.

So, in summary, the answer is a resounding yes.

ThinkMSP Summit 2014

I accepted an invitation from Mark Potter, the publisher of Canvas magazine, to attend the first instance of a new conference, called ThinkMSP Summit 2014.  Mark is a really exceptional guy who serves with me on the board of the Electronic Document Scholarship Foundation.  I've known him for a few years now, and he always has great ideas.  This conference is definitely one of them.  It was an invitation only, very intimate event. I met a lot of new, interesting people, which for me is a rarity at printing industry related events (other than Dscoop, that is.)  There was a tremendous amount of interaction at the event. It was held at the Marriott Evergreen Conference Resort in Stone Mountain, Ga, which is a very nice property in a beautiful setting.

Gene Farrell
In a talk entitled, "The Art of Business Development", Gene Farrell, GM of Amazon Web Services, talked about all the ups and downs of launching the awesome FreeStyle soda machine at CocaCola, then moving over to launch a major new cloud-based software initiative, called Amazon Workspaces, which went from zero to 5000 customers in 40 days after launch. Even more interesting is that Workspaces is a product delivered with Microsoft Operating Systems running on AWS.

Kmberly Lyles Folkman
“There is a new paradigm shift in education and in business. Visual thinking and learning is at the forefront. It has brand impact for businesses, social and global impact for individuals and consumers. As a digital visual culture, we have to know how to think visually to communicate. We now have to fuse images and text to communicate ideas.” – Kimberley Lyles-Folkman, Ph.D., The Art Institute (Atlanta)

Kimberly's talk, "Visual Thinking and Learning in the 21st Century" was fascinating. But her student Dustin Kemptner, was even more interesting. It is just so thrilling to hear a student talk about graphic design work, and new ideas. He's won a few Addy awards.

Dustin talked about a rebranding experiment he did for a German restaurant in nearby Cumming, Ga. His idea was to make the restaurant an exciting and fun destination, pointing out in a tongue and cheek way that that no one ever says, "Let's go get German", like they do about Italian, or Mexican food, for example.  His campaign would definitely sell this idea.  A new logo, menus, a website and mobile app all tied in the new branding effort. Print and digital media. He also created a "Boot" for beer, which employed temperature sensitive ink on the glass, and as the patron consumed more beer, it revealed new messages egging the drinker on, such as "You're really going to drink the whole thing, aren't you?"  The final message on the boot revealed a QR code that provided a free ride home via Uber.  

Greg Cottichia
Greg is a serial entrepreneur and a professor at the University of Pittsburgh's Katz School of Business. He spoke about B2B marketing, and how much it has changed in the last couple of years, and used his own experience launching his latest company, Malcovery Security, as the example.

The conventional wisdom about marketing, including or perhaps especially, on the web, has changed. Salespeople knocking on doors and developing the relationships is only a small part of the equation now. Instead, according to the Corporate Executive Board, at the point of the customer's first contact with a vendor today, 57% of the process to arrive at a purchasing decision has already been completed. Customers no longer need a salesperson to enlighten them to their needs.  When they finally contact your company, they expect you to take the order and actually can be very annoyed by old school sales tactics at this point in the cycle. 

So the bottom line point Greg made is, your entire organization is in sales and marketing today.  The business is no longer dependent on one individual any longer.  It is marketing’s task to influence the 57 percent of the sale that occurs before the sales contact.  Then, sales must do their job efficiently and align their efforts (and offers) with that marketing. In Greg's case, he worked with  a technology savvy student, Megan Skiff, to implement a new set of marketing strategies for Malcovery, notably Inbound, that paid off. Malcovery was one of the first customers of her new agency, MixyMarketing.

Improv
To keep things from getting too stuffy and serious, Mark brought in an Atlanta Improv troop to encourage even more interaction, and get people thinking creatively. The session, called "Improvising to Success", conducted by Atlanta's Village Comedy was incredibly fun.  Imagine a roomful of business people pretending to throw medieval axes at one another.

Don't Miss
Mark has written a book that is available now, called Egrets, Hockey Sticks & Roller Skates. I haven't had time to read it yet, but picked up my copy at the event and am looking forward to it.

"Egrets, Hockey Sticks & Roller Skates is a creative example of why stories work.  Mark Potter has shared some of his experiences and a bit of himself to help move a group of people.  We all can benefit from the moral to his stories."

- Daniel Pink, author of "To Sell Is Human"

Following in a traditional started by Jennifer Matt, President of Web-To-Print Experts, Inc., all proceeds from the book go directly to the Electronic Document Scholarship Foundation. Click here for more information on the book, and to obtain a copy.

Dscoop9: Nothing Short of an Industry Watershed

It's been about a week since I got home from Dscoop9, this year's meeting of the HP Graphic Arts User Group. This was my fifth Dscoop, my first as a board member, and the best I've ever attended-- and, dare I say, the best one yet. There are so many things that make this the best event in the industry, too, it is hard to know where to begin. I guess the biggest thing is how much I bring back with me to Standard Register, plenty of new practical knowledge but more importantly many new ideas and new relationships.

Chris Petro, Dscoop Global Chairman, and Dion Weisler, EVP of HP’s Printing and Personal Systems organization, a $60 billion annual revenue business that includes personal computers, mobility devices, technical workstations, printers, graphics solutions, managed-print services and internet services.

The theme this year was "Break the Mold", which is quite appropriate.  This event surely does break the mold of the industry user group, typical conference, greatest trade show and any educational program--  all in one fell swoop.  And though it's become quite large, it remains an intimate gathering for unquestionably the most forward looking print service providers and their trusted partners-- those who are breaking the mold of what being a printer means every day.  With close to 2,500 print professionals and a solution showcase populated by more than 100 of those aforementioned partners, you almost need not attend any other annual event.  I would probably scratch GraphExpo off my calendar this year, were it not for Dscoop and EDSF activities in Chicago. 

This photo does not do justice to how big the room was, and how many people were in it!

Over 100 incredibly valuable conference sessions! I understand almost half of the companies represented this year were first time attendees!  I personally met a handful of prospective Indigo owners, which was really cool... each of them expressed how surprised they were with the size and quality, saying it was not what they expected.  As someone who is closely involved with the event, and I've been drinking the Koolaid since my first attendance, it's unbelievably thrilling to hear this sort of thing from a first timer. And while the organization has gone global, we've hosted events in Europe and APAC, more than 33 countries from around the world were represented in the audience here in North America. It's beyond impressive. 

Rod Key

Before I continue let me take a moment and mention Rod Key, who passed unexpectedly on Sunday, January 19, 2014. Rod was the founder of R and R Images, which was acquired by Shutterfly just last year. A special memorial was held on the Wednesday before Dscoop9; then, at the start of the opening session of the conference, Rod's wife Patti (with son Austin and other family members looking on) was honored with a special new Rod Key Excellence in Marketing Award, which was created in his name by the board. 

To say he will be missed is an understatement.

To quote Dscoop Global Board Chairman Chris Petro: "Our hearts, love and prayers go out to his wife Patti, son Austin and all of Rod’s family, friends and colleagues.  For those in our community who had the honor of meeting or working with Rod, you understand the sense of loss of our dear friend; it is extremely difficult to accept. His commitment to Dscoop was unending and his passion for our industry, our organization and our teams was unwavering. Part of the original Board of Dscoop, Rod previously served as North America Conference Chair, Marketing Chair and led countless other successful efforts in our industry. Rod's passion and love for the Dscoop community personifies the essence and strength of what Dscoop is all about. His loss leaves a hole in our community that we will never be able to fill." 

In honor of Rod, the Electronic Document Systems Foundation (EDSF) created the Rod Key Memorial Scholarship. Rod’s family has asked that all donations be made to the scholarship fund. 

Keynotes

Jason Jennings is a researcher and one of the most successful and prolific business and leadership authors in the world and his greatest thrill is helping lead individuals and companies to their full economic potential.

Jason Jennings, New York Times best selling author of The Reinventors – How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change shared some great advice.

He and his team studied more than 40,000 companies and identified the ten most productive companies in the world for his bestselling, Less Is More. The book revealed the secrets of the world's most productive companies. His work continues, and he shared insight on companies like Ikea and Starbucks, focusing on the leadership qualities they embrace that have made them outstanding among the best global companies. One notable takeaway: adding Oatmeal brought Starbucks an additional $500 million in revenue, virtually overnight!

Our second Dscoop9 keynoter was Scott Stratten. He is the President of Un-Marketing. He is an expert in Viral, Social, and Authentic Marketing which he calls Un-Marketing. Scott says it is all about positioning yourself as a trusted expert in front of your target market, so when they have the need, they choose you.

Scott Stratten shared some truly useful insight into social media marketing, and entertained the heck out of the standing room only Dscoop9 crowd

Stratten claims to have over 165,000 people following his daily rantings on Twitter and was named one of the top 5 social media influencers in the world on Forbes.com. When he was introduced at the event, it was characterized as "150 followers", which gave him fodder for some self-effacing jokes! "Me and my 150 followers".  He has written three best-selling business books, the newest being “QR Codes Kill Kittens” a picture book for fed-up business people. Extreme common sense.  I've been ranting for years now about what a waste of space QR codes are, but Stratten articulates in a funny and effective way that I never could, while at the same time offering plenty of very positive advice about how to use new digital technologies. Scott made this video before his appearance at Dscoop9.

Exciting Machines, Software, Real World Examples and Sessions

I've got to nerd-out on the Operations track sessions for at least a moment here.  My fellow board member Ed Wiegand is Executive Vice President at the Matlet group. Ed, a former VP from P&G, and a guy from an MIS vendor did an amazing live demo printing Olympic personalized Old Spice labels (28 different countries) on an HP 20000 across town from the event at Matlet's location, and boxes for the bottles down on the show floor, all through through an Esko workflow.  Very cool.

Randy Bice, long time Dscooper, hailing from RPI in Seattle, Washington brought us a wonderful track on Lean Manufacturing for Digital Printing Operations. I'll tell you what, you have to love companies in the industry who are not afraid to admit they print things.

Jennifer Matt from Web To Print Experts, Inc, did a nice job on a session on the applications of the same name (Web2Print).  Just don't mention that name to customers, because they won't know what you are talking about-- absolutely true, thanks Jenni!  She also hosted two other important sessions that mixed technology and business topics. HP has installed something close to 90 Indigo 10000s, the B2 format press that leads the Generation 4 line up and is the result of a couple of billion dollars in R&D spending.  So it was only appropriate that Jim Hamilton from Infotrends led a panel of users featuring Sandy Alexander and the UK's Precision Litho. The discussion included the market and applications, as well as practical examples. 

So many more sessions to name, not enough time to write about them here. Perhaps I will add some notes over time.

Boxes awaiting die cutting after being printed on the Indigo 30000

I hate to go down the "it was the inket drupa" kind of thought process, but there certainly were some leanings toward this being the "label and packaging dscoop".  HP has a new machine, the Indigo 30000 that makes boxes. It was shown operating in North America for the first time at the event. In the closing session, Indigo GM Alon Bar-Shany mentioned he was heading to Cincinnati to visit Innovative Label Solutions (another of my board member colleagues Jay Dollries' company), where were installing a new Indigo 20000 right after Dscoop. There was a TON of supporting finishing equipment, both connected inline and scattered around the Solutions Showcase. We don't like to call it a trade show, but it did look a bit like one. Only better!

I got an incredible education on the state of the art in wide format Latex printing from one of the HP guys.  I was just walking by, admiring the output, and he gave me a wonderful education-- brought me right up to speed on this awesome technology, as well as on the market. That's the magic of the event, so much knowledge in the house, just unparalleled.

Near the area I would call "Indigo Alley", pictured here before the opening of the event, there was a showcase of some of the incredibly cool products members have made with Indigos.  My crappy iPhone camera cannot do these items justice.

Introducing Dscoop University!

Dscoop University, debuting at Dscoop9 exclusively for Dscoop members, provides industry-leading, personalized education focused on supporting business strategies and accelerating growth. The curriculum is tailored for specific job functions within member companies: business owners, sales and marketing professionals and operations and production team members.

At Dscoop9, the new initiative started out with a bang by introducing several instructor-led courses on the opening days of the event:  three in sales, three in business management and two operations management focused.  These 3-hour interactive workshops were totally awesome, featuring subject matter experts for each session, ranging from university professors to HP experts. 

John Tenwinkel, the full-time Director of Dscoop University was recently interviewed by Whattheythink.  Dscoop University offers 24/7 access to training, on-demand content, live-streaming and downloadable resources, and in-person courses. Dscoop attendee members were given significant credits so they could try classes online for free!

Other Important Stuff

Dscoop and HP jointly announced the “Tell Your Story Sales Program.” It's clear that many people on the buy side are living in a "5 years ago" mindset, and this new program creates a beautiful frame work for print service providers to help them learn about the new capabilities and extremely high quality now possible with digital. It's chock full of sales ideas and tools, over 100 digital assets, as well as videos and PowerPoints. 

Next Year!

This year marks the end of my tenure as chairman of the Technical Operations committee, which has been a fantastic experience. But I will continue to contribute to Dscoop's newsletter.

More exciting is that I've been chosen as a member of the Conference Committee for Dscoop10.  This premier event has a track record of getting bigger and better every year, but I can tell you the 10th anniversary is going to be something extra special!!  Join us March 5-7, 2015 in Washington DC!

If you can't wait that long, Dscoop Asia 2014 will be held June 12-13 in Bali, Indonesia!

Look forward to seeing you at Dscoop!

High Value Features: Increasing Importance

The clear trend in the industry for the last several years has been digital printing technologies overtaking traditional analog technologies.  And over the last few years, the sophistication of documents produced digitally has grown dramatically. You know, it wasn't that long ago that digital meant monochrome letter-sized printing!

Now we've reach a bit of a "tipping point", for lack of a better phrase, in terms of this sophistication. Everywhere you look now, you see digital products being produced with high value features. These features include, but are not limited to:

- Binding (Perfect, Case, Coils, etc.)
- Cutting (many different sizes)
- Folding (many different shapes)
- Coating (UV and others), Laminating
- Die Cutting (should probably be in quotes, because the lasers and other robotic devices are selling like hotcakes now)
- Inks: (additional imaging units have become common; Gold, Pearlescent, Neon Pink, White anyone)
- Dimensionality (i.e., Scodix, and native capabilities in HP Indigo and Nexpress)
- Papers (amazing, beautiful examples for all output technologies)
- Substrates (I spoke to someone who was printing on Hemp the other day, but plastic has become almost commonplace, and if you look at the GPA catalog, you will see a gigantic variety of versatile non-papers.)
- Foil (not done on the digital equipment, but applied to digital output)
- Special Effects (like Color Logic)

I've never seen so many example of amazing business cards since back in the early days of Printcafe... back in those days, a card that cost $3 was a demonstration of how well you could print, and all the things you could do.  PCAF had cards that were folded, scored, die cut, perforated, had at least 7 colors including a metallic and different coatings on both sides.  Those days are back, only it's digital not analog printing that is impressing.  Just take a look at Moo.com.  I bought some business cards from them, and they were insanely expensive-- so I expected the result would be for people to be impressed by them. I was not disappointed, everyone I gave them to (including many commercial printers) appreciated them.

Color Logic System Designer Swatch Book

It has been said for quite some time that anything that can go digital, will go digital.  In fact, I think Benny Landa himself has even said this. However, this is a double edged sword today.  Many things that were previously printed have gone digital in the form of not being printed at all-- rather delivered via the Internet. And many more will.  Some information simply makes more sense to be accessed via the web than via an relatively expensive piece of paper.

Other information, however, benefits greatly from the sophisticated treatments that can only be delivered by high-end commercial printing. When you understand that even the most basic printed piece is going to be more expensive to produce and deliver than something published on the web, you start to realize that the print service providers energy should be focused on producing printed materials for audiences who care about the quality of the piece. There are many examples of these categories of products and I may get into that in a future post.

Clearly, though the smartest operators in the industry have arrived at this conclusion, and are investing in capabilities that will allow them to offer all the advantages of digital printing coupled with beautiful, high-end features. They already have clients who see the value of this work, and they seek out more who fit the profile. This, to me, is the essence of the immediate future of the successful commercial printer.

EFI Connect 2013

I was very happy to get the opportunity to attend EFI Connect again this year.  I am pretty sure it was my 10th time around, out of 13 years, of this very special industry event that began life back in the Printcafe era. Wow, time flies.  The very substantial turnout of customers, partners and EFI employees continues to make it an impressive event. Only The HP Graphic Arts User Group meeting, Dscoop8 will have a larger customer turnout in the industry this year. 

January was unseasonably cold in Las Vegas, but inside the Wynn at Connect, it was hot! For me, as a former employee of EFI, it was like reunion.  I saw so many colleagues and friends, it was great to catch up and find out what's new with products I was involved with during my tenure, as well as learn about the systems and technologies my industry associates are using to run their businesses.  The striking thing this year-- it was almost "mind blowing"-- was see all the new EFI employees-- many of whom I know, but not from EFI-- like Mark McGowan, the CEO of Online Print Solutions (OPS), and Chris Woods, from Technique. Both very well respected technology companies were recently acquired by EFI, and were attending their first Connect event as part of the family.  EFI has been on a major global roll acquiring MIS vendors over the last year and a half-- including Metrics in South America and Alphagraph in Europe, not to mention venerable Prism, which was more or less a "tent stake" if not a tent pole for the new acquisitions and brought back Filip Buyse (prior to Prism, he was VP at Printcafe) as GM of the Web2Print products. At Connect this time around, Filip was so busy with customers, I only got to briefly say "hi" to him!

Guy Gecht is an amazing CEO, and he can also be quite amusing when he wants to be--  always a source of great knowledge and insight. His fireside chats with industry luminaries have become the stuff of legend at Connect.  I've been thrilled to hear them in the past, and this year's talk with Benny Landa was amazing. An industry legend and the founder of Indigo (acquired by HP a little over 10 years ago), and now CEO of several new ventures, including a new printing press and ink company, LandaCorp in Israel, Benny is like the Steve Jobs of the printing industry. He's been personally involved in over 1,000 patent applications in his career, and a large number were granted. He brings a beautiful vision and a contagious excitement to the printing industry like no other individual, or company for that matter... although EFI and HP are both close seconds in this area. I've seen Benny Landa speak 4 times starting with, and including at drupa last year. The coolest part is that I have learned something new about the man, and what he is doing, every single time.  That's pretty rare.

Benny spoke of his childhood, telling an amazing story about his father's tobacco store in which the man and his son, out of necessity to make a living for the family, built a passport photography machine. Among other unique features was that it made an image positive on glossy paper. He drew a direct line from this machine to Indigo, over the course of a few minutes of a spoken history that I'd never heard.  It was very moving.

One funny part of the Landa interview was when Guy asked Benny about the importance of workflow.  Guy was obviously fishing for an EFI endorsement, but Benny said flatly, "You're asking the wrong guy."  Guy pushed a little bit, and Benny retorted, "Why don't you ask Udi?"  At that point, much of the crowd erupted in laughter, because Udi Arielli is so well know, and another terrific feature of Connect was his Automated Workflow Experience (AWE), which is an animated, interactive, but live narrated movie that Udi's "british-academy award" winning daughter helped him produce, explaining the importance of CIM and automation, and how EFI's products enhance and streamline printing operations of any shape and size, from end-to-end. 

Benny Landa is also well known for never hiring people who have hobbies.  He wants people whose love is the work they are doing.  Clearly, he's found success hiring such people!  Guy grilled Benny on his hobbies... Music? No.  Books?  That's my wife's department.  Movies?  Benny says, "I saw a movie once in the seventies... it was called 'Debbie Does Dallas', I think."  This brought the extra-curricular activities line of questioning to a successful conclusion, and also brought the house down! Classic, outrageous, iconoclastic. Guy Gecht is as sharp as it gets, incredibly fast on his feet, and this proved that he and Benny are cut from the same cloth.

Of course, perhaps the biggest attraction of Connect is the training classes.  There were more than 150 classes at this year's event. At trade shows, there are a few interesting seminars delivered by consultants, unfortunately often leaving attendees with more questions than answers. At Connect, you can send your people to get deep-dive training, and actually save money versus having an EFI trainer come in-house. Plus, with features like the keynotes, other outside speakers, meals and receptions, not to mention unparalleled networking, it has all the good features of a trade show, too.  Many printing company owners find it to be an amazing value and use Connect as a perk for top-performing employees. There were even a number of third-party vendors in attendance, like Kodak, Xerox, MGI, Ricoh and Esko, just to name a few-- MGI even had a digital press on the floor of "The Lab", which is the central meeting space of the event. Along with the annual golf outing, and Andy Booth's newer tradition of a bike ride up Red Rock Canyon, people actually got to step outside the ritzy confines of the Wynn, too. 

If you are an EFI customer, and haven't made it to Connect, you owe it to yourself and the future of your company to attend next year.

Data: Is it the Printer's Nemesis?

I've long advocated that printing companies need to acquire IT capabilities to remain competitive. MIS systems, WebToPrint, and data handling skills have long been key to running a printing business.

All of a sudden, they are also an important part of a big segment of our product mix. Marketing materials targeted at specific consumers have been around for many years. VDP (Variable Data Printing) software coupled with digital printing took off way back in the early 2000s. Print personalization, which was once the wild frontier of technology for many printers, is now becoming obsolete. There are to big reasons for this: data and measurement.

Data
The biggest problem for print service providers is data. In a world where it's important to know "everything" about people, the only people who know that much are the search engines, and "big data" providers. Print is not part of their offering. Print might be considered competitive to their offerings but, because it doesn’t compete well, it isn’t perceived as a real threat. VDP stands for Variable DATA Printing… if you don’t have access to data, you can’t do it effectively.

It’s well understood how Google’s Adwords technology (just as one example) can deliver an audience to a marketer in an easy, cost effective way. Google approaches the marketing world in a way that is almost entirely different from a print marketer. It’s an algorithmic approach based on collecting and analyzing data. It starts with the data, not with creative. In fact, display advertising is a relatively recent addition to Internet advertising, which is somewhat incredible to imagine since the growth has been so meteoric. Such technologies are becoming ever more sophisticated.

Print media publishers can only offer marketers audiences based on their limited content. Golf clubs sell to people who read Golf magazines. With digital advertising, context matters less than tracking consumers wherever they go. That kind of tracking is the reason, for example, a shoe ad appears on Weather.com and also on a local blog.

Certainly many companies know a lot about the behavior of their customers, but many today are trying to create a strategy and framework to manage the data around it, primarily so they can participate in online marketing more effectively. Again, print isn't competitive in most cases. Print is being deployed via traditional methods, in what might be described as a “shotgun approach” versus the laser-guided smart bomb that is the Internet.

Furthermore, there is no real reason a marketer at any company, small or large, would trust the average Print Service Provider with access to their data. From security and privacy standpoints, “most” printers will not pass muster at corporate IT departments when they are audited. It’s also very often the case that the person the printer is calling on is not the person with access or control over the data, which results in barriers to selling VDP. Ironically, this has always been a barrier, and some have overcome it, but more have failed.

Measurement
With digital advertising, you now know what advertising and marketing initiatives you are running are working, and can change your campaign in real time to match customer behavior and results.

With print, you have to wait until the next “cycle”, whether it is the next issue of the magazine or the next mail drop. The only real way to determine the ROI of a print campaign is cumbersome testing that takes way too much time to implement and execute. The only real measurement of the effectiveness of a campaign is increased sales.

One impact the Internet has had on everyone is that we’re all incredibly impatient. We want information now, not a week or a month from now. When there are large amounts of money at stake, we get even more impatient—and advertising and marketing is the lifeblood of most companies.

Sounds really negative, doesn't it? Make no mistake: the days of "Dear Chuck" on a postcard are over. The good news is, there are still many applications where print personalization can play an important role. The adoption has been so limited, the sky is the limit for creative and technically savvy print service providers to succeed with these products.

But you've got to know how to use the data, and measure the results.

QR Codes- Why, Why, Why?

Although the printing industry (or perhaps slightly more accurately, its consultants and journalists) seems to have latched onto QR codes in a pretty dramatic way, parallels can be drawn to the initial hype of VDP PURLs (Personalized URLs) that took place in the early 2000s. If you pick piece from a printing trade journal written seven or so years ago about VDP and PURLs, you could replace the acronym “PURL” with “QR Code”, and the piece would likely still have the same meaning; tell the same story.

In overview, the goal of QR codes is to enhance the user’s (i.e., reader or consumer) seemingly dull print piece with access to new, rich media experiences that complement the print piece. The flip side is the notion that the print piece is driving customers to the rich media experience waiting for them to view, to help “close the deal”. These are both worthy goals, but have encountered some challenges along the road to adoption.

For printers who have implemented VDP, QR Codes are technically just like implementing a PURL (Personal Response URL) on a printed piece—the benefit is that the recipient doesn’t have to type it in. This should increase the likelihood that the prospect will engage and see the additional content. That additional content to be provided via the QR Code’s link is often a mobile website these days, but can take other forms, like playing a video or showing a map. Like PURLS and other VDP applications, QR Codes can be “one to many”, where the same QR Code could be scanned by thousands of prospects, and they are all taken to the same unique content, or they can be 1:1, where each user gets their own personalized QR code, that takes them to some content that is personalized just for them. Printing QR codes is easy, and can technically be done by any Print Service Provider, using inexpensive and even free software.

One of today’s QR Code applications, readily seen, is on signs and graphics. The consumer at the point of purchase, or in the aisle of a retail store, is enticed by offer text and graphics on a printed piece; or the merchant wants to make a special offer on a particular product or add-on item.

QR Codes have appeared in many different shapes and sizes of printed products in addition to signage and display graphics. These include magazines and newspapers, brochures and datasheets, and even stationery including business cards. The results are mixed because of some obvious limitations of QR Codes.

The biggest obstacle is software that can read the code, which is relatively cumbersome to obtain today. This limits the audience for the code to tech-savvy consumers. While at this writing some 88% of smartphones have cameras, apparently only about 13% have software installed to allow them to read QR Codes. This special reader software must be installed on a smart phone to scan the code, and it is not included with Google’s Android smartphone software nor on the Apple iPhone and iPad devices. Until Apple and Google include native QR Code applications that automatically work with smartphones built-in cameras, QR codes will remain a curiosity that will only be used by technical and “bleeding-edge” users.

Another problem with QR codes is their size and appearance on the printed piece. To make them easier to scan, they are general fairly large on the printed piece. Making them bigger also makes them obvious to the user, because it’s a double edge sword—they are seen, but they are ugly (a bunch of square dots inside a larger square), as well as meaningless and unfamiliar to most consumers. All while taking up print “real estate”.

So although the QR Code is being touted by consultants and pundits in the printing industry, it has not achieved enough traction or “ubiquity” to justify the amount of attention it has received. Does it make print complement mobile? It technically can, but today the consumer has to be quite motivated (presumably by an enormously valuable offer) to act. While it could be said that this may be the problem, not the technology itself—i.e., the creativity and motivation of advertisers to actually use this new mechanism in campaigns— it’s kind of a chicken and egg thing, and if advertisers really saw the value in doing this versus alternatives, perhaps we would all be scanning QR codes multiple times a day.

There are other ways to achieve the same results that QR Codes are promising. A company called DigiMarc, based in Beaverton, Oregon (www.digimarc.com) has been creating what they call Digital Watermarks for many years. Their software accomplishes the same end goal as QR Codes, but without the visible barcode-style manifestation. The August 2012 edition of Seventeen Magazine makes extensive use of the technology. Similar to QR Codes, the company’s solution requires reader software to be installed on the consumer’s smartphone to activate the rich media experience (in this case, software that is proprietary to DigiMarc), leaving that hurdle for the consumer to overcome. Seventeen Magazine’s young readership may be a good test, because it “seems” likely they would engage and want to see rich media associated with the “fun” content in the printed magazine. We will stay tuned and look forward to seeing the results.

Image recognition technology is likely to become much more powerful in smartphones as their processor speeds and memory capacity increases. This will allow the phones to recognize images, and retrieve offers based on the actual image itself, without a code. Google has been working on such technologies for several years, and is likely to make this available as an adjunct to their Ad Words offerings in the future.

Voice Recognition software in phones is only in its infancy now with technologies like Apple’s Siri, but will very likely be used for advertising applications. Instead of having to scan a poster, for example, you could simply speak particular text from the poster (i.e., keywords) to Siri, and she would retrieve an offer for you on your IOS-based smartphone. Apple is making gigantic investments in mobile advertising technology, so we can expect this to happen sooner rather than later.

This is an excerpt from the paper entitled, "Does Print Complement Mobile Computing", by Chuck Gehman and David Uyytendaele, published in the TAGA 2012 Proceedings.

Upcoming: Automation Solutions Network in Minneapolis

The most recent meeting of the Printing Industries of America's Automation Solutions Network (ASN) was held this past February in Memphis and featured a tour of Mimeo, and after that, a once-in-a-lifetime late night tour of the Fedex Global Superhub, to watch "the sort"-- when all the packages get unloaded, sorted and loaded onto new planes and then start flying out. For printing nerds, Mimeo was probably the more fun part of the visit, but no one could leave the Fedex experience without being absolutely astounded!

ASN is a great industry user group.  It's a unique venue by virtue of the the presentations and tours, and just as important in my book, it's an unparalleled networking event for technical people involved in factory automation and integration projects. The group welcomes a wide range of users of JDF-enabled systems as well as the suppliers of those systems. The Automation Solutions Network steering committee includes printers who have implemented successful automated workflow systems or are in the process of doing so.  There's really nothing better than talking with a peer and discovering they have the same issues you have-- or conversely, they've already solved that problem and are willing to share the solution.

The next ASN meeting will be held in Minneapolis on September 18th and 19th, 2012. There are two very special parts of the meeting agenda that are great reasons for anyone involved in print technology to attend.

First, on September 18th, there will be a tour hosted by Japs-Olson. This legendary firm was founded in 1907,  and has steadily grown to be the worldwide leader in direct mail services and commercial printing they are today, employing more than 700 people in a facility that occupies more than 500,000 square feet operating 24/7.  The company serves global customers managing campaigns from a few thousand pieces to tens of millions. The company has long been a leader in creating and implementing automation applications to support their continuously evolving business.

Second, my fellow Dscoop Operations committee member Bill Wieners, president of Digital Lizard, will give a talk about his company's use of automation.If you've never heard Bill speak, I  strongly encourage you to sign up for this event.  Bill and I did a joint presentation to a full house at Dscoop7, the HP Graphics Arts Users Group meeting, this past March in Washington, DC. As Bill and I were planning our talk, it was startling clear how similar our approaches to automation are.  Even though Digital Lizard is smaller than Mimeo, we share many of the same challenges and have approached solving those problems similarly.But different! For me, there will always be more to understand about what Bill has done, and what's he's planning on doing next. And he's an engaging speaker.

Located in a remote corner of Idaho, Digital Lizard’s experience should make every company take notice. Their Web2Print software has allowed them to scale from 175 orders to over 400 orders per day. Automated workflows for production and back end business tasks have eliminated and reduced labor and streamlined processes. The company has 14 Indigos, and a variety of other devices and finishing equipment, but a surprising low headcount.  The company was recently purchased by venerable Creel Printing in Las Vegas.

There are only 40 spots available for the meeting.  I'm going to take one of them.  Sign up now!

drupa every 4 years, but always once in a lifetime

I returned from spending a week in Germany at the every-four-years drupa trade printing and paper trade fair.  I was there with HP and  Dscoop. We had more than 1,000 Dscoop members present at the fair. HP played an amazing host and kept us busy with events and tours throughout the week.  They were showcasing several new presses including their new B2 presses, the 10,000 20,000 and 30,000, to which our group had been introduced in March at the Dscoop7 conference in Washington, DC (see previous post here.)

Here's a quick video from Whatheythink.com that editor Cary Sherburne and I shot while I was at the show.

This show always surprises, and this time around was no exception. I saw a tremendous amount of exciting technology, and had a lot of really great conversations with industry colleagues.  I am hoping to take a few minutes next week to catalog some of what I brought back from the show next week.

HP Graphic Arts Users Group, Dscoop

I just returned from Dscoop7 in Washington, DC. This was the 7th annual face-to-face meeting of the Digital Solutions Cooperative, founded in 2005. Dscoop is the independent global community of graphic arts business owners and technical professionals who use HP Indigo and Scitex equipment and related solutions. Dscoop7 had over 2,000 attendees and more than 150 sessions. More than 90 vendors showcased their solutions in addition to HP, and we also had a pre-conference program for graphic designers this year called DSee, which was wildly successful.

I'm proud to say that the Operations Committee (of which I am the incoming chairman) was responsible for a track of 10 sessions over 2 days, all of which were delivered to full house crowds! Kudos to Mike Blanco (with GPA), our outgoing chairman who led our group into the conference and Amy Biedenharn at Dscoop HQ, who facilities our every move.

I put together two sessions for this year's event. My first session was a "201-level" panel discussion called Fine Tuning Web-To-Print: Implementation and Operation. We realized going into the conference that a lot of technical and operations folks already know the basics of W2P, because these things are becoming part of how we all do business. A lot of companies now run more than one system or are in their second or third implementation.

So we put together a panel of experts to discuss the challenges and opportunities and talk about the nuts and bolts of such topics as storefronts, cross-media capabilities, e-commerce, workflow and business system integration, variable data printing and customization online, hosting decisions and more.

I wanted to have representatives of all the great Web-To-Print solutions present at the event. Logistically-speaking, it's awfully hard these days to get technical people from printing companies to commit to speaking at events. Thanks to Leslie Wengenroth at PageFlex, the well known VDP and storefront vendor, we got Paul O'Brien, CTO of Acculink, a leading-edge printer in Greenville, NC to join us. I managed to round up a nice cadre of technical people from most of the solutions present at Dscoop7: Alex Boissezon from Pixfizz; Chris Young from XMPie, a Xerox company; Greg Salzman- CEO of Aleyant Systems; Steven Enstad- one of the founders of PageDNA; and Becky Schick from HiFlex, now an HP company as a result of their recent acquisition.

There was a time in the not too distant past when a panel like this would have seen the vendors bickering over small points and vying for the microphone to get the last word in. This panel was nothing like that, in fact there was much agreement on many points, little contention. These companies all have powerful solutions: Paul and I as the users on the panel could easily see the value in each of their products and technologies. In the recent past, software vendors had more of the approach that the marketplace was a zero sum game, and to win you had to squash the competition. This isn't the case any longer. Today, you must pick and choose among solutions that fit your target customer and market, and they must work together. That was the overriding message of the session. I had 3 pages of "seed" questions I put together in advance with the help of the panel. I only made it through a handful. We had fantastic audience interaction, many great topics arose. The session could have continued for the entire afternoon if the time had been available!

The second session I presented was called Printing is Easy, Everything Else is Hard (Workflow Automation), and was somewhere in between introductory and 201 level. I partnered with Bill Weiners from Digital Lizard, who is a kindred spirit and well known in the group. Digital Lizard is owned by venerable Las Vegas offset printer Creel, and while smaller than Mimeo, Digital Lizard is very advanced from a technology standpoint-- and they own almost as many Indigo presses as we do! Like Mimeo, they produce both documents on demand as well as photo products.

The premise behind the session was that when you have powerful equipment on your floor, printing is the easy part. The hard part is getting the work from the customer onto the press, tracking it throughout the steps in your operation, getting it finished and out the door, finally delivered and billed. The solution for many of these challenges lies with advanced workflow automation.

Bill and I presented case studies of the way we do things at our respective companies. We talked about key building blocks for implementing solutions to help our attendees streamline their operation, while improving efficiency, quality and profitability. This session was in the last time slot of the event on a Saturday afternoon, and I am happy to report that the room was completely full. Bill and I can't take full credit for the topic or the speakers being such an exciting draw-- it's just as much a product of the fact that the Dscoop audience is definitely the best and brightest, and most dedicated, group of printers in the industry!

There were many, many other highlights at the the event. Notable among these, the introduction of new HP Indigo Presses, the Indigo 10000, Indigo 20000 and Indigo 30000 the "biggest" among them, in more ways than one-- these new machines can print in the popular 29" or B2 sizes, and applications include commercial printing, labeling and packaging. There were many other announcements, including software upgrades and new workflow solutions. HiFlex was highlighted in a couple of sessions, and in the solutions showcase. I will talk more about the software aspects in an upcoming post.

Keynote marketer Sally Hogshead provided an exciting and fun kickstart to the event. It's the first time I've seen a Keynote presenter at an industry conference do a shot on stage! HP Indigo GM Alon Bar-Shany, presented a fantastic "state of the industry" report, with terrific insight. Bar-Shany paints a very good picture for adopters of the technology, and HP Indigo as an organization is well positioned to help printers capitalize on the opportunities ahead. Along with all the data, Alon pointed out that Dscoop7 began on March 22nd, which was the 10th anniversary of HP's acquisition of Indigo. Resting on the laurels of the past 10 years is not in the cards, though, as the company charges forward!

Even though Dscoop7 has just ended, I'm already looking forward to Dscoop8 next February in Dallas, Texas!

(photo credit Bryan Yeager, Associate Director, Infotrends, from pre-Drupa festivities at HP in Israel the week prior to Dscoop7.)