Pat Henry of WhatTheyThink recently spoke with Roland Stasiczek, Director of Marketing, Continuous Feed Printers, Océ Printing Systems to discuss the Océ briefing presented in Munich. Roland also previews what to expect from Océ at drupa 2012 including the newest addition of the ColorStream 3700 inkjet press.

Sticking with the inkjet trend, Océ predicts that digital printing will account for %14 of global printing revenues by 2014. Roland sites three main factors driving this growth including:

1. Increasing media fragmentation.
2. Information supply and demand which drives on-demand printing.
3. Increase of personalized and targeted communications.

For more detail, check out the interview video.

With the growing trend of printer’s desire to have “one-stop-shop” printing systems, one wonders if we will also see an increase in finishing solutions and options at this year’s drupa. It seems logical given the shift to providing complete and customizable end-to-end solutions. Printers are looking for finishing systems that will fit seamlessly into their digital technology production lines that will further automate the printing process.

So what will we see at drupa 2012??? Stay tuned for a post-conference recap webinar coming in June 2012!

The focus and size in no way limit the value and learning opportunity provided. There are six tracks and over forty-five sessions dedicated to providing information and insight. The best part of the sessions provided is that they often lead to very interactive discussions amongst the speaker and the attendees, leading to a sharing of perspectives across different functions and industries. I attended a session on Managed Print Services where I was reminded that when speaking about anything with documents, it is a good idea to set the stage by explaining whether you are referring to internal business documents, business-to-business documents, or business-to-customer documents.

The opening keynote presentation by Forrester Research, “The State of the Document Processing Services Industry 2011”, provided great background and thought provoking information for the rest of the conference. The presentation states it is time to change our process approach. We think we’ve got it all under control and we do to a certain point, but firms still struggle to manage untamed business processes: customer onboarding, claims processing and invoicing process. “1998 – 2009 marks a lost decade consumed with packaged apps and leaving enterprises stuck in cement, unable to rapidly change, compete and innovate. 48% will invest in collaborative technology to improve app performance.

Another part of the Forrester presentation described Customer Communication categories and primary applications. They defined the categories as: structured, interactive and on-demand. Key industry concerns include: enterprises trying to get rid of a big headache – aging structured output systems, the ability to quickly comply with new regulations; rapid movement to on-demand and interactive transactions and archaic fulfillment process.

Another unique take away I got from this year’s event was to remember that when talking about “multi-channel”, (and who isn’t?), we need to not only think about the broad variety of output channels with print, email, web-hosted, social media, mobile, etc., but we also need to focus on the breadth of the input information channels from multiple administrative, transactional, marketing, and yes, even customer response sources. As a process-focused individual, this suddenly seemed obvious; you need to look at the inputs, tasks, and outputs in any process to be effective, I do not think I have experienced any other time which highlighted the input side.

I believe that the focus provides superior interaction and networking opportunities. The attendees are mostly high level individuals with 45% of them holding C-level or Director/Department Head Positions. 28% of the companies represented generate 3+ million outbound transactional documents per month (and 13% of those are generating 10+ million per month). I personally have met and established ongoing relationships with many key contacts through participating over the past four years.

This event may be one of the best kept secrets in the industry, and I am looking forward to what the show organizers will do to keep improving for their 5th anniversary event in 2012.

For more information on transactional document solutions, visit Océ Production Printing – Transactional Resources.

It’s certainly very important for all of us that are associated to the printing industry to understand what marketers are thinking and talking about. Thus, I’d like to share some of my observations from DMA 2011. I hope that you find them helpful!

1. Marketers are absolutely in need of integrated solutions:

One theme that seemed to exist in many of the conference sessions was the need to break down silos and to integrate marketing efforts. As more and more marketers move to reach their customers and prospects through multiple channels, many of them have fallen into the trouble of storing and managing multiple databases. Those databases might store conflicting or simply varying bits of information about their contacts. This harms a marketer’s need to try to communicate with their audience in real-time. It also prevents a marketer from truly delivering one-to-one and relevant messages.

Thus, service providers (especially those that are committed to offering marketing services through multiple channels as opposed to only print, mail, or fulfillment) have a tremendous opportunity to promote and offer solutions of that nature to their customers to help them solve those challenges.

2. The Primary Discussion was Digital — But Print Still Has a Place in the Marketing Mix!:

I won’t lie – many of the discussions at DMA 2011 centered around online marketing and other digital marketing initiatives. But there were still a number of great case studies shared that involved print and direct mail components. Some of the main reasons why I heard marketers share why they still chose print as a channel included:

• It is tangible.
• It can be personalized.
• It can create a deeper emotional impact.
• It can be a very effective way to drive people to online content.

3. When it comes to social networks, businesses have a lot to learn:

Judging by the attendance of various sessions, many companies are still striving to learn how to effectively use social networks in the B-to-B space. Here were a few of the tips that I heard that I’d like to share:

• Twitter’s search features can be one of the most powerful websites for companies to utilize. It enables us to really listen to what’s on the minds of customers and prospects.
• Facebook’s dominance in the social networking space is truly astounding — thus, we most likely all need to invest more resources there. They have 800 million users! Nearly half of them log in each day.  30 billion pieces of content are shared there each month! Those numbers clearly dwarf the activity that other social networks can share. With that much volume, it’s certain that some of the content being shared and discussed has to do with companies and products. In order to capitalize on the opportunities there, business of all shapes and sizes must be on Facebook too.
• People love video. It’s true. Video is being used more and more by marketing agencies and other companies to tell their stories. I truly think that many service providers can utilize video to do the same thing

4. Mobile and QR Codes Were Huge… and Growing:

There were a ton of QR Codes at the conference. They were on posters, signs, collateral, and clothes. While that is a good sign to me when it comes to printing, I also noticed that most of the QR Codes were not used 100% properly.

• Primarily, most of them seemed to point to non-mobile websites. I truly think that there is a tremendous opportunity for service providers to grow their business by doing more than just providing or printing the QR Code; but rather, to also offer the building and hosting of the mobile website or mobile landing page.

 “I think the lack of turnout was because prospective attendees could not figure out who the target audience was for this content”- Chuck Gehman; “  

 “The challenge for On Demand is that it must keep the print providers (and vendors) and add the publishers and new media types” – Charles Corr.

On the one hand there were some excellent sessions. On the other hand – there were  just not enough of them.  The print industry and digital print experts continue to talk about reinventing and finding ways to improve print but, the whole first day of the conference was pretty much dedicated to Publishing which in my opinion itself was being redefined. 

As a consultant I find all of this very interesting, however as a former print operations executive I long for the old days when I could hear from customers and supplier resources about what they needed and how I could meet their needs.  I question whether those providing equipment or involved in the print industry will spend their discretionary funds for conferences and expositions in the future.  Many have already started offering their own events for their customers and prospective customers.

What drives the choice to attend?  

Personally the amount of content I have to choose from is very important.  This year Publishing Exchange had less than 40 conference sessions while the co-located AIIM Info 360 had over 100 and Xplor over 60 plus 2 facility visits. I want to have clearly defined tracks and a good selection of sessions in each. I want the information to be useful in the near term, if we don’t pay attention to the near term performance and profitability we will not survive to the future. 

With so manyevents both in the spring and in the fall my question to you is how you choose which ones to attend? What are the most important factors for you and your company?  

I have already stated my bias for content, but more importantly if I am paying to attend an independently produced event, I expect the content to be balanced and independent not slanted to the sponsors. If interested in a specific supplier you would be better off in seeking out a service or equipment suppliers free educational offerings.  Interestingly, many of the former sponsors of these shows are now producing their own events and bringing in top notch, independent speakers. They may in fact be more concerned about not appearing biased at their own events than at those they pay to sponsor.

I am less concerned about the location, however the cost of transportation, hotels and food is important as these easily add up to more than the conference cost itself.  Is having more detailed information of the presentations in advance important to you and what about full copies of all session presentations being available after the conference?  Do we find more narrowly focused offerings or broad sweeping events more valuable? The conference organizers are struggling to keep pace with changing dynamics of our industry and making their organizations successful at the same time.  Telling producers more about what is important to us before the events rather than offering a critique after might be helpful.  Having a venue to do this across multiple venues as well as the possibility of a show guide comparing all of the options for different events would seem very beneficial to all parties.

If we want better events to attend we need to speak up on what we want and make sure to give credit when someone gets it right.

I asked if they felt that it was critical to be able to offer clients exact Pantone or PMS color or if it was more important to be able to offer color consistency from run to run. I wondered if their marketing clients were asking for a standard that the recipients of the mail don’t care about. Within the context of delivering a full-color, white paper solution to customers, what are the “must haves” and what are the “nice to haves.”

After a lot of discussion and debate among some pretty knowledgeable industry professionals it boiled down to the following key points:

• Marketing departments have a lot invested in branding, and color is a key component of branding. With that said, any marketing department that chooses to deliver multi-channel campaigns is, by definition, making compromises on color. Color will not be consistent across email, web, mobile phones, various papers, signage etc. That is an important discussion to have, and can set the baseline for color consistency tolerance.
• Most recipients of mail have a much higher tolerance for variations in color than the business professionals sending them. If you were using a spectrophotometer and running a test in a lab, a color variation measured as a Delta e of 1.0 is generally considered to be barely perceptible to the human eye. Outside of the lab, a Delta e of 3.0 to 5.0 may go unnoticed by the average consumer.
• Setting expectations on color capabilities, educating marketers on variations in color across substrates (something they should know but often don’t) and agreeing on acceptable and MEASURABLE tolerances is critical to success. Don’t just let them tell you that they are looking for “luscious.” (Shout out to the Off Register folks.)More research on how consumers view color (real quantitative studies folks) would make it a lot easier to reach reasonable compromises with marketers. Sponsors wanted!
• If you have the ability to print CMYK plus 1, 2 or 3 Pantone colors, you should be able to charge more for it as long as you have the color management and color measurement tools in place to back up the promises.

At the end of the day, it is the design (information transfer not pretty pictures) and the content (information to be transferred) that should rule – not AT&T orange (probably not allowed to call it orange) or Coca-Cola red (they probably think they own the term “red”) or Luscious pink – but we all know that if we want the business, we need to be able to give the customer what they want.

 How much color is enough? How much do you want the business? How much is the client willing to pay?  So, ask them, agree on measurement for color tolerances and set prices accordingly. There needs to be a “pain and suffering” charge at certain levels of color management and client management. Enough is enough!

I’m going to be presenting a webinar on the business issues related to transitioning to color next Tuesday, March 1 at 2 pm EST. You can register here. I’ll be sharing some more thoughts on the myths and realities of moving to color and DST Output will also be sharing some of their “lessons learned” from transitioning to color. Let me know if there are some key points you’d like to hear about.

You can find a copy of the presentation at www.insightforums.com

The emphasis on publishing was not what I expected from On Demand; cross media communication, yes, but publishing? The Corporate sponsorship of the different tracks was also a surprise. In past On Demand conferences, the sessions provided opportunities to understand how technology, suppliers, and customers came together to solve Business Communication issues. I wondered what drove this to change from what seemed to be a very useful and well attended format. There was no communication beforehand that the title, format, just about everything had changed. Where do I go now to get information on postal issues like IMB, and on fulfillment or distribution or the many other business communications topics that On Demand was known for?

Finally after looking a couple more times and reading more of the marketing materials I concluded this was the only conference at the ON DEMAND Expo this year. Based on my positive past experience and a bit of curiosity I decided to go ahead and register for the Publishing Xchange Conference. We will have to wait until March to see if that was a smart thing to do. I am still struggling however with how Business Communications (Direct Marketing and Critical Customer Documents) are Publishing. It appears that service providers, suppliers and clients representing a broad spectrum of offerings are being driven together under Publishing, Why?

Have you seen the television show “V”, where lizard aliens look human until they are wounded and you can see the lizard underneath? It appears On Demand has suffered a similar fate. Someone put an On Demand shell over a publishing conference. What’s the message here? When they talk about business transformation and industry restructuring on the On Demand home page, do they mean all of us in Direct Marketing and Critical Customer Communications should throw in the towel and try Publishing? Is it “invasion of the conference snatchers?” Or maybe it’s a Borg plot and “resistance is futile.”

Have aliens taken over ON DEMAND? Should I be afraid?

I thought about this and I identified a possible reason that Print Service Providers (PSPs) don’t “embrace change” and continue to use the same approach for their business.

I call it – The Fear Factor!

Let me explain.  During this year’s PODI AppForum there were many excellent presentations where PSPs demonstrated how they had embraced new solutions and were growing their business in many new, exciting areas of opportunity.  Several Print Service Providers (now Marketing Service Providers) introduced example after example where they had generated millions of new printed pages (higher value pages with new services) as a result of embracing change in their business and building new capabilities.

Was it easy – NO!  But is it possible – absolutely!

Why is it so difficult to embrace change?

Here’s a short list of PSP Fear Factors that have been shared with me over the years:

• The FEAR of failure
• The FEAR of change on their business
• The FEAR of change on their customer
• The FEAR of their competition
• The FEAR of change on their employees
• The FEAR of a new technology impact in their organization
• The FEAR of commitment to something new and the learning curve
• The FEAR of “can the sales team sell new offerings”
• The FEAR of any change on core offerings

Every one of these concerns is valid and worthy of further analysis.  Rather than viewing these concerns as threats what if we viewed them as opportunities? As executives continue to face the fear of the unknown they will just as quickly tell you that they are working hard for business improvement. The executives I have spoken with will typically tell you that they would like to achieve improvement in the following areas

• Grow top line revenue
• Secure new customer wins in new areas of opportunity
• Improve shop floor efficiencies
• Lower production costs
• Grow bottom-line profit
• Grow the business with new capabilities

If executives seek business improvement, but at the same time, fear the changes that drive it, what should they do?

Here’s a short list that might help answer that question.

• Identify market opportunities that complement your business capabilities
• Identify services that are an extension of your business
• Build capabilities that your customers are investing in
• Seek market opportunities that are generating significant growth
• Invest in the necessary resources for success
• Make the time to meet with others that have made the journey successfully – learn from them
• Identify partners that have the means to help you achieve success
• Do the research, embrace the change and develop a plan for success

There are just too many examples of new growth in our industry to not pay attention to how this is being accomplished and to learn from it!

In closing, there are a number of significant growth arenas available to every Print Service Provider in the industry.  The growing number of successful companies achieving business transformation is a reality!  Fear is good as a guide to what you need to plan for but not if it leads to paralysis.  Embrace the growth opportunities in front of you, learn from others and find the right partners for success!

I would just like to say to Matteo Bologna – with great mustache comes great responsibility. If he takes typography as seriously as his mustache, the man is very, very serious.

If you think you have typography worthy of submission – the deadline is next week. Finalists and winners may be included in the TDC Annual (#32) which is quite an honor. Are you a type snob?

Last week I attended the PINE Annual Awards Gala, where the focus of the evening was on viewing the entries to the Awards of Excellence in Printing contest and then seeing the winners of each category announced to receive their awards.  There were hundreds of entries in about 30 categories, from annual reports to various types of books to catalogs to newsletters, all beautifully printed, well-designed and showing us that ink on paper still is appreciated in today’s digital world.  And yes there were three categories for digital printing as well: campaign, personalized/variable data, and on demand. 

But where are shows like this going?  Offset printing clearly continues to decline and the number of pieces produced that qualify for a show award will also diminish.  Meanwhile digitally printed work will continue to increase, but will they be the types of pieces that are award-suitable? 

Perhaps it’s our categories that need to change to accommodate the multi-channel campaigns that our forward-thinking print communications companies are creating and producing today.  Developing marketing communications campaigns for our clients using pURL’s, QR codes, direct mail, video, email, and all social media should be our new categories, but will our printing industry shows even acknowledge them for recognition or do we enter these in our local Direct Marketing Association competition?  Only time will tell.

“Magazine media companies are rapidly embracing cross-platform business models that incorporate print, digital and other ways of providing content to consumers,” said Jack Griffin, incoming Chair of MPA, and CEO of Time Inc. “MPA’s new identity expresses our strong belief that, together, all of these forms collectively express what it means to be a magazine media company.”

Added Nina Link, MPA President and CEO, “The essence of what consumers love about magazines – the immersive experience, the curated content, the sense of community and the award-winning photography and design – is now being enhanced by technologies and devices that support high definition imagery, video animation, mobile e-reading and Web access. The future of magazine reading is undergoing a transformation; audiences and advertisers now interact with magazine brands on so many different levels and platforms. MPA’s identity simply had to reflect this fact.”  

MPA will officially launch its new name and logo to its membership at the annual American Magazine Conference (AMC) on Monday, October 4, in Chicago – the same week as GraphExpo descends on Chicago.

MPA will also premiere a new series of videos at AMC called “Magazine Media Minutes.” Produced by the editors of various magazine titles, these mini-documentaries spotlight how innovative magazine titles are creating content and brand experiences across a variety of media platforms.  Participating magazines include Food & Wine, Glamour, GQ, Men’s Health, More, Natural Home, People, Popular Mechanics, Real Simple, Runner’s World and Yoga Journal. The videos are available on a special MPA YouTube channel at www.magazine.org/mmm. Most of these videos talk about how new media is better than print – can you find me one that doesn’t?

“In defining our business as magazine media we are explicitly focusing MPA’s leadership agenda on promoting magazine brands and their unique relationships with consumers across all platforms,” said John Q. Griffin, outgoing MPA Chair and President of National Geographic Publishing Group.

All platforms, including print? Hmmmm. Maybe we should take a bunch of GraphExpo folks on a  field trip over to the AMC next week . . .