In 2010 two of the printing industries largest players – Canon and Océ – announced plans to merge with Canon taking over Océ North America. That announcement has officially come to fruition with the launch of Canon Solutions America, Inc., on January 1^st of this New Year. The new company reports to Canon U.S.A. and combines the best of both companies to offer a depth of sales and support for Canon and Océ hardware, software and services targeting general office, production print and large format markets.

While this is major industry news, what does it mean for customers of both companies, print providers, and marketing service providers? I’ve tried to sum up a few key areas below:

• Increased Focus on R&D. Canon and Océ product strengths complement each other in that Canon is strong in office printers while Océ is a market leader in continuous feed, high-volume, and wide format printers. Canon has shown a large commitment to funding R&D which will benefit all product lines and allow the companies to build on each other’s strengths.
• Service. Océ is known for its quick response times and exemplary servicing practices to average 98% uptime. Canon production customers will now benefit from this and receive the same promise of efficiency and uptime.
• Workflow. Océ PRISMA® workflow software has been greatly successful in on-demand printing environments. Now the software will be available for both Canon and Océ product… handling new job types in shorter run lengths with the ability to support converging offset and variable data applications
• Financing. Canon brings financial strength to the table which means more options for financing and leasing printing equipment – this goes for both Canon and Océ product lines.

Those are just a few things to be on the lookout for as the new Canon Solutions America, Inc. establishes itself in the printing market as the combined force of two well-respected companies. Only time will tell if Canon and Océ are truly, “stronger together”.

If you want to learn more, you can read the official press release here or read the merger brochure here!

According to a new report from Smithers Pira, “The Future of Variable Data Printing to 2017,” we finally can put some numbers on the overall growth opportunity for variable data printing. These are not hard numbers since Pira does not track the difference between variable and static clicks, but they are “max ceiling” numbers based on total 100% digital + digital preprint/overprint numbers.

Smithers Pira projects the global variable data printing (VDP) market opportunity (not including catalogs and packaging) to be 656,756 million sheets in 2012 or 28% of total output in the areas under review. It forecasts VDP market opportunity to be 853,097 million sheets in 2017 or 34% of total output in the areas under review.

What’s particularly interesting about these numbers is that globally, Pira forecasts traditional print/preprint output to fall by 0.5% CAGR between 2012–17. This tells us that the opportunity for VDP is coming from the overall cannibalization of digital from offset.

Pira forecasts electrophotography, for example, to grow by 1.5% CAGR and inkjet to grow at CAGR of 14.2% on a global basis.  Likewise, 100% digital output is forecast to almost double from 8.2% market share to 14.2%.

In a global print market that is essentially showing stasis or declines in output volumes, these numbers are really striking. We’ve known for a long time that digital is cannibalizing offset, but these forecasts give us some idea of how quickly and to what extent.

As digital market share grows, so does the lure of VDP. Not just for personalization in marketing, but also for process improvement, cost reduction, and efficiency. In fact, these are the areas in which Pira found the opportunities for VDP to be the greatest.

Process improvement is not sexy, but volume is volume, and the more printers start thinking of VDP as a process, not just a marketing approach, the more those opportunities will continue to open up. Plus, process improvement is an easier sell!

Since the advent of high speed color inkjet presses that approach the quality of offset, printers and data centers have begun struggling with the decision of integrating this new technology into their operation.

The decision to move print volume to high speed inkjet is complex and one that does not always have a clear ROI.  Since inkjet brings new and different ways of thinking about everything, you have to implement the system and related changes into your existing operation.

In small-to-midsize printers, this decision will impact nearly every facet of the organization’s processes, including the markets you pursue, how you estimate and price your product, production flow, quality, materials and warehousing, and personnel skills. In many cases, precise navigation these decisions can determine the very survival of the establishment.

But before you get to any of that, first you have to decide if the move to color or monochrome inkjet printing is right for you.  In some cases, modification of your current printing environment is all that is necessary to keep you competitive.  For instance, if you print offset now and have only long runs and little or no variable printing, switching to inkjet most likely will not provided any benefits.  Your efforts should probably be focused on tuning your current production processes.

If you have some of the factors that often make going to inkjet a decent return on investment, that is, you have short runs, need to print variable data, or are overprinting on preprinted material, actually calculating that ROI can be elusive.  Every business case that I have built has been has been completely unique.  Little of any previous analysis was usable. This is mostly because every shop I worked with has accounted for their usage and cost so differently, and each have their own business processes.  Because of that, a single model to capture all of the possible permutations would be so complex that it would lose its value as a template.

And each shop has a different starting point:  Some are all digital already, leveraging the best of the toner technologies, some are all offset, some print variable information on preprinted shells, some carry finished product and some don’t, and some need to meet incredibly tight SLAs.  Some are sheetfed and some are web shops.

Yes, there are common components that remain the same. This includes all the things you may normally think about:  Skilled prepress, press, and finishing labor; Press maintenance and cost of downtime; Plates chemicals and other consumables costs; Toner and click charges; Paper waste and energy costs.  You need to look at ink, paper cost differences, throughput and uptimes, waste, time to produce, cost of shells, and inventory obsolescence. I like to look at some things that you may not consider, like the efficiency gained by consolidating your longer runs to an offset press (if you use offset) and being able to capture business you could not reach in your current state. And if your customers are somewhat flexible, you can add to the business case by demonstrating the efficiencies that minor changes in format or color might give them a marketing advantage or you a cost advantage.

Although you probably have a great handle on your current costs, capturing which of those costs could be eliminated by inkjet, and most importantly, understanding what your new costs REALLY will be, is even more of a challenge. Often, the use of an outside expert could be a very valuable investment. They can help you understand exactly what your new costs will be as you transition to inkjet, model your production with real world data that will give you uptimes for both the printing and finishing environments, help you select and value the new kind of operator labor, and more.

I have just finished reading a very interesting case study in the December 2012 issue of Target Marketing magazine.

It’s for Red Tie Insurance Services, which revealed how it works all the angles to squeeze every drop out its rented lists. Although the company relies on cold calling as its initial point of contact, its approach would work for print and mail, as well.

Here is the nutshell:

1. Once or twice a month, Red Tie purchases a homeowners list based on ZIP Code radius.

2. It imports the list into its CRM system to glean all the phone numbers, address, and names associated with those homeowners.

3. It cold calls all homeowners on the list. For those it cannot contact by phone, it contacts by email if available.

4. Using its CRM system, Red Tie finds Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter accounts for the leads it cannot contact by phone or email and invites them to connect through the company’s Facebook page.

Red Tie has a 22% conversion rate among prospects with whom it speaks, and outside lists comprise 65% of its marketing mix. I have a call in to the owner, Reginald Hawkins, to find out what percentage of those email contacts and social media invitations convert to actual phone calls. As soon as I hear back, I’ll update this post.

[Update: Hawkins indicates that his email contacts generate about a 3% conversion-to-phone call rate. Social media is marginal, but it's just an important "catch all." You never know what leads it will generate.]

For clients who serve business and professional services providers who target homeowners, renters, new movers, and similar audiences, a  similar approach could be used with print, as well. Instead of cold calling, use personalized print as the first contact.  If possible, prime the pump with personalized email or use email to follow up (“Did you receive our postcard?”). Connect with nonrespondents using social media. It’s a simple repeatable approach that has paid off for this marketer.

As a side note, if you go to Red Tie’s Facebook page, it’s interesting that they have a huge QR Code in the upper righthand corner that says, “Scan Me!” The code takes you to a mobile version of its site. We might say, “Why would someone scan a QR Code to go to the mobile site when they are sitting at a computer right then and there?” The answer is, I don’t know, but what I know is that people do it — all the time.

As we speak, I am finishing a round-up of six installations (all but one of which were in 2012) of the current generation of high-resolution, high-speed inkjet devices for the February 2013 issue of Printing Impressions. It’s a follow-up to the one I wrote in the March 2012 issue. It’s always fun to do these sorts of things in back-to-back years to compare how things have changed.

I don’t want to spoil the fun by giving anything away, but here are the top three observations I made while doing the interviews and writing up the article.

1. The companies profiled this year had significant pain points that were solved by high-speed inkjet, but I didn’t sense the level of urgency I heard from last year’s interviewees (which made their installations in late 2010/2011). This year’s crop had pain points that justified early investment, but those pain points weren’t so acute that they couldn’t wait the extra 12 months or so to let the bleeding edge adopters be the guinea pigs.
2. Last year, the installations and integrations had enough challenges and created enough frustration that a number of interviewees were willing to share some of them with me. Those comments weren’t always on the record, but I heard quite a few of them. This year, the overriding answer to, “What surprises did you encounter?” was, “How few surprises there were.”
3. Substrate challenges, including lack of available substrates, was not a significant factor. One interviewee indicated that, at the very high end, the options were still limited, but he expected that to change rapidly enough that he didn’t think it was really worth mentioning.

Overall, these companies found that the biggest challenges were in adjusting to the speed of these presses and the rollfed environment. One company had to make some adjustments just to fit the press into its production facility at all. With the inline finishing, the press was 75 feet long.

Who are these companies, why did they choose the presses they did, and what are the specifics of those installations? Check out Printing Impressions‘ February 2013 issue to find out.

In front of me sits TrendWatch Graphic Arts Publishing  Winter 2001/2002 written by me more than a decade ago. I flipped it open to the business challenges section to see how things had changed. When respondents were asked the question, “In the next 12 months, we must address these major challenges,” it wasn’t what was at the top of the list (the perennial economic conditions, printing costs, and business direction) that were most interesting. It was what was at the bottom.

Here is what publishers were not overly concerned about in 2001/2002.

• Profitably managing shorter deadlines (35% citing this as a top business challenge)
• Putting up their own website (10%)
• developing an Internet strategy (27%)
• Implementing cross-media applications (using the same images, design elements in print, Web, possibly broadcast) (20%)
• Repurposing images/jobs for multiple output formats (15%)
• Fulfillment and distribution issues (14%)
• production for e-books (5%)
• streaming media (5%)
• Competition from Internet sales challens (like Amazon.com) (3%)
• losing sales to e-books (2%)

If I’m not mistaken, don’t these “minor” challenges from 2001/2002 now define the direction of the publishing industry?

If we’re honest, 10 years isn’t that long a time for such radical shifts to take place. Yet the business drivers and production workflows have absolutely turned on their heads in that amount of time.

That bears directly on where the printing industry at large is today. If you think about where we are with social media, full digital production, mobile access and marketing, and e-books now, it’s about the same place all of these other issues were 10 years ago — clearly on the radar and creating pressure, but being pushed to the back burner because they just weren’t bad enough yet. Now what were once back-burner issues are driving the publishing business model.

I’m finishing an update (February 2013 issue) to the high-speed inkjet feature I wrote for Printing Impressions last year. The attitudes, business drivers, and capital investment trends in high-speed inkjet in the publishing, high-volume direct mail, and statement printing verticals reminds me of the early days of toner in commercial printing. In many ways, I feel as if I’m writing the same articles all over again.  New technology, same old cycle.  So it goes with most things, right?

Social media, mobile media, 100% digital production (whether inkjet or toner), and other buzz technologies have long passed the threshold at which they need to be deeply incorporated into our business models. History tells us that, if we’re smart we’ll do it now because that shift is going to happen with or without us anyway.

It should come as no surprise that more and more people are shifting their once offline activities to online activities. This is true for things like shopping, reading newspapers, keeping in touch with friends and family. In fact, you are even reading you are even checking on your industry virtually by reading this online blog. This trend has numerous meanings for the printing industry which affects book printing, magazine printing, creating marketing communications, and… printed bills and statements. Scary stuff for the printing industry! But, is this shift actually as prevalent as we think it is?

According to a massive 2011 InfoTrends study, the shift is taking place slower than anticipated. In fact, only 11% of American consumers receive their bills electronically. While there is a push on the part of billers to move billing and payments online, the vast majority of customers still prefer a printed statement. That is the good news for printers. However, younger generations between the ages of 18-24 seem to have adapted most to online billing and payments, which may suggest that future generations will do the same.

What does this mean for printers? It means that they don’t need to panic yet. But they do need to keep an eye on the future and whether or not this trend of online activity continues to shift. In all likeliness, it will. Unless printers can come up with creative reasons why the printed piece is more powerful. With the increases in variable data printing capabilities, printed statements can act as a personal and impactful touch point with customers that the online experience may not fully provide.  A printed statement can be an opportunity to inform, educate, and promote. This is especially important when considering that, according to InfoTrends, printed statements are still the best way to cut through the clutter of communications.

So don’t give up on the printed statement! Think of it as a challenge to capture emerging generations. Could this be a new resolution for 2013??

Well, I finally did it. Yesterday, I upgraded to the iPhone 5 and added an iPad 4. Now I have to figure out how they change the way I live and work from the way I was doing it before.

As I have sat here musing about which apps to add now that my phone can finally handle them, my thoughts wandered back to a seminar I attended at a conference probably two years ago. I don’t remember who it was given by, or even which conference I was attending at the time, but I remember the point the speaker made.

The point was that as the world goes increasingly “digital everything,” print has unique role, not as a competitor to online media, but as an archival medium that complements it.

Think about the volume of images we accumulate (not to mention generate) both personally and professionally.  Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter. What happens to those images over time? Especially on the lifestyle or company culture boards, there are some really good images on there. Once they are shared, what additional value do they provide? Or do they just get buried under the incoming onslaught?

The statistics functions offered by these sites tell you which images, which pin boards, captured the attention and sparked the most imagination of viewers. If your clients are active in these social media, what could they do with this information? Could they use these images, these tweets, this information, in their marketing or to promote their brands? Or could you hit a Pinterest- or Instagram-active prospect with a great, creative idea for leveraging the images from its online content?

For example, could you help your clients or prospects take the most shared images and create coffeetable-style books (“Pin-Ups: The Best of XYZ Company on Pinterest”) to share with their employees or clients? How about personalized “thank you” gifts to key contributors, donors, or staff based on the images they — themselves — shared the most? Could you collect the most retweeted tweets in an informative or entertaining volume? How about the most “liked” products to create an infographic?

I’m just throwing things out there. The point is (and this was the point made by the speaker that day), many of your clients are already active in the world of social media. That world is not just a competitor to print. It can also be a source of great inspiration for generating additional print volume by using print at its best, as well.

Direct mail is great. It has proven effectiveness, it’s tactile and it holds a certain sentimentality that cannot be matched. Video has been the hottest technology for years, and shows no signs of slowing down. It has been said that Direct Mail could suffer as a standalone marketing medium, but when made part of a multichannel strategy (through integration with email, social media or video), it actually can become stronger than the sum if its parts. Here are some ways to integrate video with Direct Mail:

QR linking directly to video

The most basic and inexpensive way to integrate video into your direct mail is through the use of QR codes. By creating a QR code that links to a YouTube video, you can create immediate conversions across channels, as the user in transported directly to your YouTube Channel or a custom landing page on their smartphone. Even better, if you work with a marketing provider that utilizes digital print and PURL technology, you can track and collect information as each user is whisked away to the land of your business video. Host these videos on your social media platforms, and that just adds one more facet to the Multichannel experience!

Die-cut postcards to “fill in the blanks”

Modern day print machinery can do amazing things. With the use of die-cutting on a postcard, video can literally “fill in the blank” of the removed portion. Direct the recipient to a simple YouTube URL or use a QR code to redirect the recipient, and have the user place the card on top. Voila! Instant tactile interaction with the mail piece and video combination. Think of creative ways to make the die-cut recess become part of the video. Video software becomes more inexpensive every year, and a little brainstorming can lead to an inexpensive campaign really producing a high-class touch!

Integrated video/picture utilizing translucent space

I’ll admit that I grabbed this idea from our blogger, Craig Blake, and his blog “Is Print Dead? Not According to Lexus!!” Cineprint technology is the branded name for this technology, and Sports Illustrated recently blew a number of minds with this advertisement:

As you can see, the branded technology can produce amazing results, and look for many marketers to use similar technologies (or homegrown versions of this technology) to really make mail pieces pop. Imagine your utility bill coming to life when placed on your iPad. Imagine a campus tour coming to life as the seasons change in front of the Admissions building. Imagine your spending habits graphed out live directly on your bank statement. Your imagination is the limit when a printed piece pairs with video elements that bring it to life.

Video on/in printed piece

A few years ago, Pepsi Max rolled out an advertisement in Entertainment weekly that literally had a video embedded into the magazine. The user chose from a variety of prerecorded options, and was able to interact with the magazine. This technology is getting less expensive every year, and with the benefit of behavioral and demographic data, this investment could be the right way to reel in that high-end real estate client or investor. When you utilize the data about your target audience, you can know your investment isn’t for naught. People know when you’ve put a lot of money and effort into your communications, and nothing has quite the “Wow!” factor that a video in a personalized mailing.

Augmented reality

Augmented Reality is defined as: Augmented reality (AR) is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.

Direct mail will greatly benefit from AR applications in the coming years, as apps on a smartphoneare being developed at a rapid pace and at a reasonable cost to facilitate the use of printed images and AR. Several Higher Ed institutions are already using this technology to make personalized direct mail experiences, and with Google Glasses, websites will (likely) literally be able to be viewed from a mail piece. Landing pages, videos, graphics in 3D- the possibilities are literally endless, and so exciting. This technology is probably the most advanced of those discussed, but has great possibilities.

So there you have it, five ways you can integrate video into direct mail. These suggestions can be as inexpensive or as expensive as you choose. So to the naysayers: Direct Mail is not Dead, print isn’t passé: they are just in need of a multichannel spin, and what’s cooler than video?

It’s fair to say that the business model for health insurance is in the process of being completely redefined by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA or ACA). Health insurers can expect to spend the bulk of 2013 getting ready for the new post-ACA marketplace. How far reaching are these changes? Well, they impact critical factors like:

• Who insurers can sell to: individuals in addition to groups.
• Who insurers must sell to: no ability to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions.
• Where they sell their products: new Health Insurance Exchanges (HIE) in addition to the usual channels plus new retail branches.
• How they can sell their products: products offered through exchanges must conform to one of 5 standardized options.
• How they can price their products: they must devote 80% (in some cases 85%) of premiums to actual customer medical expenses leaving only 15% to 20% for all administration and overhead.

In addition to the changes that are mandated by the plan, there are many changes that just naturally flow from adapting to a consumer-driven market. In 2011 approximately 50 million people – or about 16% of the US population – had no health insurance coverage or eligibility for government sponsored health programs. In 2014 approximately 60% of that population is expected to purchase private health insurance coverage – that’s about 30 million new customers. In addition, another 17 million customers may come on the books as states expand Medicaid eligibility to more low-income Americans since most states contract Medicaid coverage to private insurers.

Insurers are trying to turn their marketing and sales organizations into retail operations to tap the consumer market. Like retailers, they are trying to leverage data on their customer base to drive effective marketing and communications programs. Since, other than marketing Medicare supplement programs, most insurers have had little or no consumer marketing experience they need help in this area. Compounding the problem, according to PWC, this new insurance market is made up of consumers who are likely to be less educated and many will need material in a language other than English.

Since many of these new insurance consumers have never enrolled in a health plan before, they are likely to shop for health insurance they way that they would shop for any other major purchase like a home appliance or a car – by seeking out a familiar brand. To become top of mind before these people enter the market, insurers are investing in a wide array of advertising: TV, radio, web, print and billboards to build awareness. Direct mail, email and mobile marketing will only increase as new products become available and market data is refined.

But the retail transformation goes beyond branding, insurers are opening branches where consumers can learn about insurance options and buy on the spot. In May, Horizon BCBS announced that they would be opening a new retail center in New Jersey and Blue Shield of California recently opened a “Blue Shield Store” inside of Lucky’s Supermarket in San Francisco. These are two of several retail store-fronts in 5 or 6 states with more to come in 2013.

These retail operations will naturally need to be staffed with knowledgeable people and supported with kiosks and other technology but, they will also need printed collateral, the ability to order and manage collateral across locations and the kind of seasonal and tailored signage seen in the best branch banks and retail stores.

Back in June, I posted about a Forrester/Silverpop study that shows a rise in marketing automation, including trigger-based marketing. Among the data used to construct triggers, according to the study, were transaction history, order and response history, social media activity or comments, and account activity and balance.

The latest study from Epsilon, its Q3 2012 Email Trends and Benchmarks study, adds to this picture. Marketers’ use of emails triggered from welcome, thank you, or abandoned shopping cart pages rose 10.3% to 2.6% of total email volume in Q3 2012 compared with the year-ago quarter. Triggered open rates performed at 75.1% higher than “business as usual” (BAU) emails in Q312.

These and similar trigger data provide important lessons for the digital print industry. Primary among them: Triggered email doesn’t work because it is email. It works because it is triggered — it offers really, really good timing based on something the consumer himself or herself does. That kind of relevance works for print, too.

The more we see data showing the value of triggers for email, the more it should motivate us to do the same for print. This might mean sending an extra 25% off on the recipient’s birthday. Incentives and promotions to renew subscriptions, leases, or licenses right before the renewal date. Or “we miss you” communications and discounts offered to customers who haven’t ordered from you past a certain date.

There are lots of triggers that you (and your customers) can use to generate high-impact direct mail. Or email if you’re doing multichannel marketing. That, of course, means having the data to construct the triggers. So if you haven’t been able to convince your customers to append their databases or turn their mailing lists into marketing databases, maybe triggers are your “in”!

Two weeks back, I wrote a post based on my phone conversation with Jacob Aizikowitz, founder and president of XMPie, who has a difference of opinion from me on whether ultra-short-run batches or “personalized” one-off projects driven from W2P portals should be considered variable data printing like 1:1, database-driven personalized jobs are.

I ended that post by asking, “Does the distinction matter?” and asked for Digital Nirvana readers’ opinions.  This morning, I received a very interesting and detailed response from one reader that I think is worth sharing.

Here is what Phillipe Cardyn had to say:

I think the distinction does matter. For the record: we are XMPIE customers and use Jacob’s excellent software for both applications. But both are sold by two distinct sales teams in very different contexts and processed by different production teams to be sent to the same digital presses as described.

The ‘interaction driven’ VDP come from distributed marketing platforms: online applications that we build and market to meet the needs of a brand owner seeking to leverage the communication power of his sales and distribution channel by giving them access to ready-to-use templates. Very often, these materials are produced in multiple versions (= customized to the user ordering a particular set of documents) but not necessarily personalized (= addressing the individual recipient, potential buyer). The print jobs coming from these platforms can sometimes be batched, but the resulting batch size is often small.

Marketing, evangelizing and selling this is quite different story from the sales pitch for direct mail solutions (rules-driven VDP) where we don’t need an online application but efficient processes and services to produce the right VDP job in time (one large batch) to be mailed, handled, and shipped according to our customer’s instruction.

So yes, we use the same tools for both, but we don’t sell them to the same customers at the same price.

You’ve read both sides of this issue. What’s your experience? Does the distinction between interaction-driven (W2P) “VDP” and rules-driven VDP matter? Or are they really flip sides of the same market?

In the spirit of the holidays, foldfactory.com is sharing a playlist of some of their favorite holiday solutions from their world-famous sample library. Watch “magic hands” videos of 16 inspired holiday card solutions.

People have been sending us cool holiday cards for years, and we thought it was time to start building a playlist of holiday solutions to help companies get noticed at this time of year. If you’re a printer or designer or paper company, there’s a lot of pressure to do something memorable at the holidays, and I hope the playlist grows and becomes a springboard for new ideas.

Of course, foldfactory is always looking to expand the sample collection as well. If you produced a holiday card that you’re proud of – this year or in the past – we’d love to add it to the playlist and share it with the world. We’re also always looking for interesting solutions for direct mail, marketing brochures, pocket folders, invitations, specialty folding, and even bound solutions that integrate interesting folding techniques. To submit samples to foldfactory.com, please visit http://foldfactory.com/contact.php for a mailing address.

Being at Graph Expo this year, I was interested to see how big of a topic environmental sustainability was. So many industry-leading printing equipment manufacturers were eager to demonstrate their environmentally responsible solutions. The industry has come under pressure in recent years as the growing trend to go “paperless” takes off. But what I was surprised to learn, and I’m hoping many others will be too, is that a number of myths exist regarding the sustainability of paper and the printing industry. Thanks to information I picked up in one booth from Two Sides (www.twosides.us), I engaged in my own version of myth-busters and would like to share the same with you.

Myth: Making paper destroys forests.
Fact: Paper production supports sustainable forest management and depends on sustainable forest growth to provide a reliable supple of wood fiber.

Myth: Making paper is bad for the environment.
Fact: Paper is one of the few truly sustainable products because it is made from a natural resource that is renewable and recyclable. Furthermore, paper is one of the most recycled products in the world.

Myth: Making paper consumes a considerable amount of energy.
Fact: While this true, nearly 2/3 of the energy used is self-generated using renewable carbon-neutral biomass. Most U.S. pulp and paper mills are self-sufficient and some even supply excess energy to the electric utility grid.

Myth: Harvesting trees to make paper is bad.
Fact: Sustainable forest management can actually benefit people and the planet by supporting jobs and reducing development.

Myth: Electronic communication is more environmentally friendly than print and paper.
Fact: This is not necessarily true as online media also has environmental impacts which are easily underestimated. Electronic products have a lifecycle including depending on energy and managing end-of-life products which also has an environmental footprint. This seems like an especially important tidbit of information for print shop owners to share with customers.

These are just a few of the myths Two Sides debunked for me. On a whole, it seems like encouraging information for our industry and worthy of sharing on a larger scale. If you’re interested in learning more, I definitely recommend checking out the Two Sides website and learning more. They do a great job of formally researching and presenting data to support all of these claims.

Sometime back, I wrote a post about whether or not we should call 1:1, rules-driven personalization and batch printing of one-off or other ultra short-run jobs created in a Web-to-print environment both “variable-data printing” (VDP).

My position was that the end result might be the same — a whole lot of unique jobs — but these documents are created in different environments, under different conditions, and the sales process and cycles are different, too. Thus, they should not be referred to as the same market or using the same terminology.

This post prompted a response from Jacob Aizikowitz, founder and president of XMPie, who took a different position. He argued that both processes result in unique documents, each potentially 100% different from the other, produced on a digital press. The front end might be different, but the back end result is the same. Thus they should not be considered different markets.

It took a few weeks, but Aizikowitz and I finally caught up for a lively and wide ranging phone conversation about our differing points of view.

Said the XMPie president,

When we started, we thought about personalization the way you are writing about it. You can take a document and decide what elements in it are dynamic and how rules and data will drive the dynamic content or design. Then you can provide a list of recipients  — say 100,000 different individuals — and the batch process will create a print stream that will produce 100,000 different printed pieces that are all variable.

But as we went along, I started thinking in a different way.  At the very back end, digital print technology allows printing a stream of pages where each can different from its predecessor. The fact that the variability of these pages was defined through rules and data, and that these pages were created through a batch process covering — say — 100,000 records in advance, is not so critical.

Personalization (or varibality) can be defined by 100,000 people interacting with a document template from a web site, adjusting dynamic areas according to their choices and through that creating a personalized version of the template. Assuming they all want to print it, then either this will result in a 100,000 print jobs, each handling one document (an extremely inefficient way of implementing it), or all these requests will be aggregated, resulting in a job of a 100,000 different pages printed by the digital print technology.

I feel that both of these scenarios — the batch one and the aggregated on-demand one — are VDP.

I get that. So it depends on whether you are defining “VDP” from the front or back end. On the front, it’s different. On the back, it’s the same.  Which end of the horse are you looking at?

Then we moved on to the issue of sales processes and sales cycles.  Aren’t these applications sold differently? Using different value propositions? For different applications? Yes, Aizikowitz said, but while they are sold at different levels of the company, they are still sold essentially to the same types of companies in the same verticals. If you think of them as fundamentally different markets, you might be missing the opportunity.

I don’t agree that these are different markets. At the end of the day, the print provider comes to the car dealer. They can offer them a campaign of monthly or quarterly distribution to their customers or they can offer them a portal where their sales managers can do customized communications to their customers or prospects. All of them are engaged in different flavors of personalization yet the same type of print.  The same thing can happen with supermarkets or other verticals.

By putting yourself this notion that interaction-based personalization and rules/data based personalization are fundamentally two different markets, maybe you are missing an opportunity.

Of course, someone can be in W2P at the very basic level that has nothing to do with variable data.

Agreed, said Aizikowitz,

But when you get into customization, branding, and lists, I don’t know that there is such a clear distinction between those who are interested in W2P portals and those interested in direct mail. It’s my intuition that it’s the same customer.

The bank will be interested in direct mail, triggered by the central entity. At the same time, agents or branch managers would like the ability to do projects in which they select and customize documents intended for their, local (and small) distribution list.

If you aggregate all of this individually driven smaller-scale personalization projects, then you are getting a big VDP job as if you manage it all centrally. Yes, these are two different workflows on the front end. But it’s a bit difficult to accept that they are disjoint markets.

Again, I can see his point. But these workflows still aren’t identical, which was my point. Maybe we can agree that they can both be called “variable data.” The question is whether and how to distinguish where the variation is generated from. If we call them both VDP, then perhaps we need subsets of VDP — rules-driven VDP and user-driven (or, as Aizikowitz suggested, interaction-driven) VDP.

Do you think the distinction matters? I do. I think the ability to make those distinctions and understand and articulate the variations in the worlds of production, consumer behavior, and marketing are important. Even if not from a production point of view, the from a marketing, sales planning, and strategic point of view.

What do you think?