This week’s example comes from Creative Squall in Texas who put together a fun series of direct mail pieces featuring cool photos and the reverse accordian fold. Take a look – it’s super-cool!
Reverse Accordion Direct Mail Series:
This weeks fold is a wrapped accordian example from Alli. A wrapped accordian fold with wafer seal is a great way to add interest while keeping the job fully automated. Take a look.
Here’s an example of 2 brochures in one. This piece is designed with 2 covers – open from one side and get one set of information, open from the other and get a different set of info. In this case used for a Summer and Winter schedule. What makes it all work? The Super Cool Reversible Accordion Fold. Take a look!
This week’s super-coolr fold is a Circular Event Invitation that was so good it got used twice. Hidden message: showcasing your work can lead to more business! Keep on folding.
This week we have a fancy foiled letter fold with an exotic die cut. Very elegant – take a look!
The best marketing ideas today are operationally justified. Envelope marketing is no exception. A variety of solutions for printing messages on envelopes have been touted to marketing departments for a long time. Some companies pre-print messages on the outside of envelopes such as corporate taglines, incentives to go paperless or eye catching graphics to entice the recipient to open their mail.
Megaspirea, a French firm, introduced what they called “Dynamic Envelope Creation” via the Mailliner 100 at IPEX way back in 2006. Dynamic Envelope Creation was hailed as a holistic process for making a complete mail piece (envelope plus content) out of a single print stream. Variable images and messages could be printed directly on the envelope itself. Despite a strategic relationship with Pitney Bowes and Emtex that should have given the company a lot of reach in the US market – the technology never really took off.
You would think that the ability to dynamically market on the outside of the envelope would be marketing catnip – but in fact, many direct mail marketers feel that the white envelope approach is more effective than jazzy graphics on the outside of the envelope. Transaction mailers today, are still not well integrated with marketing departments (whether in plant or service providers) and therefore envelope marketing is a tough sell to this group.
DST Output (www.dstoutput.com) recently announced an envelope marketing solution that, despite the demise of past market entrants, I believe has a real chance of success. Why? Because the solution is as appealing – or potentially even more appealing- from an operations and efficiency standpoint as it is from a marketing standpoint. Like white paper, full color printing in general – operational efficiencies from wrap envelopes are creating the business case for more effective marketing. First let me explain the solution.
DST’s Wrap Envelope technology is a no-touch process for printing, wrapping and finishing high-volume, First-Class Mail packages in a high-speed production environment. Wrap extends major mailers’ customer marketing efforts with dynamic messaging that can be applied to the front, back and inside of the envelope. This means that the solution provides an envelope marketing opportunity for transaction mail like statements and bills, but also can double as a stand-alone self-mailer.
DST Output’s Wrap Envelopes are printed duplex on continuous plain roll-stock paper, and then literally wrap around multiple pages of statements, bills, inserts and reply/remit envelopes. The process enables mailers to embellish the interior as well as the exterior of the envelope with marketing messaging and promotional content, such as coupons, event information or other customer marketing materials – and can include customer data on the interior to create the self mailer – or additional personalized offer.
There are other operational benefits as well:
The Wrap Envelope is a compelling solution for one-page statements or bills – with or without a remit envelope. From a quality perspective, Wrap utilizes an integrated no-touch manufacturing process that tracks each and every mail piece during production to verify that the total package is complete and accurate. If an error is detected, the process automatically remakes the entire mail package.
So, no-touch quality control, cost savings, improved privacy and sustainability and – oh, by the way – completely dynamic messaging inside and out. I think that’s pretty innovative. (Take a look at the examples below.) If DST was selling this as a hardware solution, I think it would be a big success. For now, only DST outsourcing customers can take advantage of the technology and it will be interesting to see whether it is adopted for the marketing features, the operational features or both. How would you use it if you could?
(Click on pictures to see larger view)
Wrap Envelope (front) with logo and text message
Example of Wrap Envelope (front) with Dynamic Graphic
Wrap example with Dynamic Messaging on Back of Envelope
Wrap envelope with Dynamic Graphics and Messages Inside
"Outside In" Wrap Campaign
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This week’s example from Specialties Graphics in Toronto shows a creative combination of an angled guillotine cut with an accordian fold to create a very sophisticated mailer with a “tabbed” look.
It’s a fold you can feel good about.
The super-cool fold this week is from Monadnock Paper. It is a beautifully printed piece with very well executed finishing. Take a look.
This weeks’ super-cool fold can add a lot of interest to a simple mailer. Take a look!
Asymmetrical Triple Parallel with Short Foldout:
The super-cool fold this week is from Pantone Color Innovations. It’s a fresh twist on a standard size and format.
Short Fold Direct Mailer with Rotated Format:
A couple of weeks ago, Harvey Hirsh posted that we should “Stop Selling Rectangles.” He offered some great ideas and insights – but if rectangles are what you’ve got, you can still make them more interesting with folding and finishing. Here is one of the super-cool folds from the foldfactory.com archives. Let me know what you think and stay tuned for more!
Asymmetrical Triple Parallel with Short Foldout:
Last time we talked about ways Océ is helping customers build business with inkjet technology and how market acceptance of digital print quality has changed. Today, in the final installment of this interview, Mal Baboyian talks about how Océ is changing the way it presents itself to the market at big venues like PRINT 09 and gives us a glimpse of what the company will have on display in Chicago.
NW: Océ used to show only its high speed production presses at shows like PRINT or Graph Expo, but at recent shows you often have one or two wide format machines on hand. Why the shift?
MB: Océ has one of the broadest product lines in the industry covering the office, wide format, display graphics, and production printing. But even customers in these segments weren’t always aware of our other offerings and capabilities and didn’t necessarily think of Océ when they needed a different type of equipment. Having a wider range of equipment at shows strengthens our brand by showing the full scope of our offerings and helps position Océ as a leader in more segments of the printing market. We also share some technologies across the different divisions of the company and are always looking for ways to leverage what we know. As I mentioned, our inkjet experience in wide format aided us in developing the JetStream family. Many of our customers had no knowledge of Océ’s breadth of solutions in the office, production printing and wide format segments. And many of them have needs in more than one segment .
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