I drove past my local post office yesterday morning, one that is not closing, as far as I know, and noticed a FedEx drop box about ten feet from the main entrance door. It was clearly on USPS property. Or rather, on my property, and your property. I never noticed it before, in the way that many things that are a little out of place are invisible until you need them, or your brain has a spare moment and recognizes them. So as I ran my errands, I arranged to pass a couple of other post offices and found the same thing –FedEx drop boxes lined up next to the Express Mail box and regular USPS mailboxes.

This reminded me of our collective reactions at shows like Graph Expo as the major equipment providers, many with competing hardware or software or services offerings, began to populate each other’s booths as part of “solutions”. Often we did not know whose booth we were in. At the time, this blew our minds.

Of course, there are collaborations – or contracts – between the USPS and the private package delivery carriers already in place. The USPS Global Express Guaranteed service is the USPS’s “fastest international shipping service with transportation and delivery by FedEx Express”. And UPS Returns Flexible Access uses the USPS Parcel Return Service combined with UPS’s own delivery network.

These collaborations appear to leverage the strengths of each organization. The USPS, however, with its monopoly, (or responsibility), for First Class Mail and Standard Class Mail, is left with the less profitable deliveries of the carriers’ packages in out-of-the-way locales. FedEx and UPS are clearly dependent on the USPS for final delivery and pickups of packages in remote areas that are, of course, routes covered by the USPS.

The USPS must continue to focus on performance improvement in its core areas of responsibility – First Class and Standard Mail, but it’s time for the USPS to start thinking about “solutions”, and “collaborations” in the true sense of those words, to help promote its own sustainability instead of mere survival through cost-cutting.

Looking for more information? Visit www.OceWow.com and sign up for the free monthly newsletters designed especially for Transactional and Direct Mail providers.

Hawaii Medical Service Association (HMSA), an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, is a reliable name in Hawaiian health care. Established in 1938, it is the largest and most experienced provider of health care coverage in the state. Over half of Hawaii’s population has chosen HMSA for their coverage.

HMSA’s mission is to provide quality, affordable health plans, employee benefit services, and work site wellness programs. HMSA also offers a variety of programs, services, and support to help improve the health and well-being of its members and community.

In the complex and dynamic world of health care, nothing is more important than high-quality, effective communications about subscriber benefits. Assumpta Rapoza, Director of Enterprise Risk Management for HMSA, clearly understands the importance of ensuring clear communications about benefits for subscribers. Rapoza stated, “Quality communications are essential for
customer satisfaction as well as the retention of a loyal customer base.”

Clear Messaging to Drive Loyalty
With health care on everyone’s agenda, HSMA wanted to effectively communicate the true value of the individual’s health insurance policy. The company decided to create an annual cost savings report that raised the subscriber’s awareness of the actual costs for medical procedures and
medications, the amount covered by HSMA, and the resulting financial benefit.

According to Rapoza, “If the subscriber went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription, he or she typically didn’t know the actual costs and the HMSA benefit. We wanted an agile solution where we could customize communications based on the specific member profile. We were seeking tools that would enable us to create personalized messaging for each subscriber in the form of an annual summary report.”

Rapoza continued, “We needed to push out the messaging. We knew that we wanted to mail out customized statements. While electronic delivery is a more costefficient way to deliver information, we are cognizant that a high percentage of our membership still prefers paper.”

The Solution
HMSA leveraged Océ’s Technology & Software Support (TSS) Solution Development Manager and Systems Consultant resources, its existing investment in Océ digital print technology, upgrades to its Océ PRISMAproduction® workflow software, as well as the GMC PrintNet Variable Data Composition software to design a solution for its annual benefits summary statement. This combination enabled HMSA to design, compose, produce, present, manage, and automate printed documents with individualized targeted messaging that was HIPPAcompliant. The system design also needed to accommodate production in print and electronic formats, created by PrintNet. Rapoza noted, “The end-result was a customerfriendly communication that clearly articulated the value that HMSA was delivering to its membership.”

To read more articles like this, visit www.OceWow.com and download the September Newsletter.

We all know that marketing is about the strategies and tactics you use to identify and cultivate the market for your products/services. The degree of importance can vary based on the industry, but it’s hard to think of any businesses that can survive without at least thinking about how to grow demand for what they’re selling.

Firms that are successfully delivering cross-media marketing services are investing time and resources to marketing and business development. Savvy executives are pursuing radical new approaches to change up their organizations. They are getting their companies to concentrate on developing new revenue streams from new products and services, while optimizing income from existing lines through innovative marketing and the rapid exploitation of changing customer needs and tastes.

The Facts

InfoTrends just completed a study entitled The Evolution of the Cross-Media and Marketing Services Provider. The study surveyed more than 280 print service providers to understand the current state of cross-media and the evolution taking place in the graphic communications market. The first key message is that service providers as a community understand the critical importance of getting into cross-media services. Of the 285 total respondents, 58% are currently offering some level of cross-media services.

Furthermore, nearly 87% of print-for-pay respondents were either offering services today or had plans to start offering them within the next 24 months.

These print service providers understand that print is still a very relevant medium, but they have also acknowledged that the communications channel has changed dramatically and altered the role of print. In turn, print service providers must transform. Print used to be the only tool in the box, but now it’s just one of many integrated services in the marketing solutions mix. There is clearly a good understanding of the technologies available today to connect print with new media options, so printers can take advantage of all cross-media channels and help customers market smarter with relevant 1:1 content.

Getting There Takes Marketing Focus
Marketing needs to be a core concern in any business. When it comes to running a successful business, marketing is often the cornerstone for driving results. Firms that offer cross-media marketing services were more likely to cite a focus on sales, marketing, and business development when asked to describe their primary area of responsibility. The critical message is that success in cross-media requires leadership with a focus on marketing and new business development.

Want more? Visit www.OceWow.com to download the InfoTrends white paper The New Value Add Equation!

Putting the Wow in any offer requires understanding and delivering value. If you want to understand the value of TransPromo, you need to look at it from a few different perspectives:

• What does marketing (your customer) value?
• What creates value for the organization producing the document?
• What does the end-recipient of the document (your customer’s customer) value?
• If you can understand and deliver value for all three of those groups, Wow! What an offer!

TransPromo, which involves leveraging transaction data to deliver relevant, personalized customer communications, provides this opportunity. The capability to add relevant marketing content to transaction documents, such as statements, invoices, and electronic payment notifications, is tremendously valuable to marketing because it allows the marketing budget to be used more efficiently and, in many cases, more effectively. For example, TransPromo can:

• Replace direct mailings to customers by leveraging campaign content on the transaction document
• Reinforce and promote campaigns delivered via other channels (see our new ad on MTV! Visit our website for the latest discounts!
• Generate improved response rates and develop stronger customer relationships by making offers that are relevant to each reader and delivering “point-of-need” content triggered by customer data

Relevant offers have been shown to increase response rates by 300% over those that are simply personalized, according to research conducted by PODi. Similar studies conducted by the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) indicated that personalization alone can boost response rates by 44% over static communications, while personalization plus color can take response rates up 135%. When campaigns are personal and relevant (defined as one-to-one content) and produced in color, response rates increased by 500% over static — meaning that relevance provides a bump of 365% over personalization and color alone. Transaction documents provide the customer data that enables relevant campaigns — and relevance delivers stronger response rates.

While TransPromo is usually positioned as a solution for the marketing folks because of its proven ability to increase response rates, decrease campaign costs and shorten campaign cycle times, it has tremendous value for print production operations as well. Print service providers and in-plant printers maximize profits by streamlining document processing to the nth degree (or to the sixth sigma if you prefer.) This means maximizing the “up time” of all equipment and simplifying warehouse operations. TransPromo enables many of these benefits in a black and white environment — and offers even more Wow when you add color. With TransPromo:

• Inserts can be turned into “onserts.” This avoids batching mail to fit selective inserter limits and can allow mail to be manifested, potentially reducing postal spend and bypassing physical presorting machines
• Inventory management of physical inserts and setup of inserts on intelligent inserting equipment can be eliminated, increasing up-time for inserters and reducing storage and handling costs
• The relevant messages will also be delivered online for your e-presentment clients (which is not usually the case with inserts)

Printers are also happy to add another profitable service area to their bag of tricks with the ability to manage and report on campaign messages. While marketing departments have many tools for managing campaigns on other channels, few have extended their technology to support TransPromo. Providing the ability for your customers to leverage their existing campaigns and digital assets on the transaction documents you produce for them has the added value of deepening ties with marketing and making your services more “sticky.”

The final bonus in the TransPromo value chain goes to the end-customer, who receives a document tailored to their requirements with valuable offers based on an understanding of their buying habits. They will also be less likely to receive additional annoying and irrelevant offers from the sender, perhaps slightly diminishing the clutter in their mailbox (or inbox). Well-executed TransPromo initiatives have been proven to improve customer loyalty and reduce customer attrition.

A solution that saves money and generates better response rates while making operations more efficient and keeping customers more satisfied? It sounds like TransPromo is a winning proposition.

Visit OceWowFactor to download the InfoTrends white paper entitled Electronic Use of Transaction Data, a Catalyst for TransPromo Across ALL Chanels.

Vice President, Mountain States Printing Education Foundation

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics had promised it was finally going to post many of our industry’s real production-related job titles/occupations on July 15th after almost a decade of work, initiated by Mountain States Printing Education Foundation. They are now saying that the “16.0 Database will come out the end of July/beginning of August. New O*NET online with 16.0 database will be released in September.” This continues to be one of the most frustrating endeavors that those of us who have been working on it have ever encountered.

In 2001 we (Mountain States Printing Education Foundation and Printing & Imaging Association Mountain States) were approached by the City & County of Denver to begin a funded training program for our industry, which they considered one of their largest and most important industries. The impetus changed after the tragedy of 9/11, but the following year we began working with them again.

What came to light at the time was a major discrepancy with what we and the City knew to be true and what the Department of Labor (DOL)/Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) had to say about our industry. We learned that all of the Federal industry data was completely incorrect and most of the information that they were reporting about the industry was 30-50 years old, although there were a few current job titles/occupations listed. We were extremely fortunate that our information prevailed at the time and we began training programs for current and potential industry employees. The funding underwrote training for 36 employees, one of which is now a member of Mountain States Printing Education Foundation – Melissa Rogers.

Prior to starting the classroom training, we assembled a number of Colorado printing related firms to review the job descriptions/occ upations that were posted on the Department of Labor’s Occupational Information Network (O*NET). Once that was accomplished (changes made to existing job information, very outdated jobs listed for removal and new jobs added) we hired an intern to gather and prepare a list of all current industry-related jobs and submitted them to our first contact person at the Department of Labor. That process took until early 2004. At the same time, a gentleman who had been hired as a consultant by DOL’s Employment & Training Administration (ETA) contacted Ben Cooper, former VP of Government Affairs at Printing Industries of America, to get his approval of the printing industry information posted on O*NET. By then, Cooper was aware of what the Foundation had discovered and sent the gentleman to work with us. With the approval of all the PIA Affiliates around the U.S., the Foundation took on the task of being the voice of the industry to “fix” the misinformation that was being purported about the industry.

Part of the “fixing” process was to have our intern, Nelson Alfred who was attending Platt College at the time, collect a list and short job description of every job in the industry and prepare a brochure which was sent to BLS noting every job that “Requires Industry Related Education or Formal on-the-Job Training”. That information was basically rejected by BLS since it was industry generated. We then partnered with the Colorado Department of Labor to generate a survey (in government manner and lingo) which confirmed our information, forwarded it to BLS and again the information was disregarded. At the same time Jim Kyger and Ron Davis from Printing Industries of America sent their surveys of job information (wages, job titles and The Print Market Atlas) to their contacts at the DOL – same result.

There were many theories about why the government information was wrong, one of which was that because there were no current apprenticeship programs, it was suggested that by writing new, modern apprenticeships – the information would be updated. We worked with the Colorado representatives from DOL’s Bureau of Apprenticeship & Training (BAT) to write the needed programs which were approved by DOL and the Union only to have them listed under classifications that no longer exist in the industry. At that point we pulled the apprenticeships until changes were made to the “job titles/occupations”.

Throughout the process former PIAMS president and Foundation secretary/treasurer Kathy Lauerman had ongoing dialog with various BLS/ETA/BAT representatives. One of the BLS representatives was also on an international SOC Code group (Standard Occupational Classification codes) that adopted our updated titles on an international level – but not in the U.S. This gentleman also took it upon himself to informally confirm our information in the Washington DC area, and of course it was confirmed.

Requests for approval and input continued from the BLS and at that time Carol Hurlburt of NPES and Kathy Lauerman of PIAMS, who have both since retired, were both heavily involved in the dialog. Promises were made over the years from various DOL departments to update the information but none came to fruition. In 2007 the Education Summit Group for Graphic Communications, a group sponsored by the Print & Graphics Scholarship Foundation (PGSF) adopted the cause as one of their action items. By then many Graphic Communications programs around the country were being closed – Most of which because of the misinformation being purported by the BLS about our industry. In addition the number of industry employees generated by the Department of Labor was also underreported because they only count production related numbers not full industry employment numbers.

The Education Summit Group active sub-committee members who continued the effort under the chairmanship of Mark Nuzzaco of NPES included Pat Klarecki from Ferris State University and Kathy Lauerman with tremendous support from Jim Kyger at Printing Industries of America, who ultimately took the reins to continue pestering BLS (and still does) to get correct industry information posted.

There are so many people to give credit to for helping with this decade long project and the list is far too long to cover – but you all know who you are. Thank you for your input and persistence. We would be remiss though in not thanking the woman who first came to us from the City & County of Denver who believes strongly in our industry and is a great proponent of what we do – Priscilla Bohl, not your typical bureaucrat. And, an additional “thank you” to Alexandra Hall and Joe Winter of the Colorado Department of Labor, who we can’t wait to eventually send a note to when the Feds finally update our information. Having correct job title/occupation information will also help them collect proper statistics on a state level.

Now all we can do is sit, wait, and continue to pester the DOL to get what has been approved and posted in the O*NET/SOC taxonomy placed on the actual O*NET website that is used by schools, economists, and all government agencies.

While there’s been a lot of bad news surrounding the United States Postal Service lately, a heightened level of innovation exists  both within the postal service and externally in an attempt to transform the organization, as well as the concept of mail delivery itself. This past June, the PostalVision 2020 conference in Washington, D.C. brought together senior USPS personnel, technologists, analysts, and journalists to openly discuss the future strategic direction of the postal service under the premise of what it should look like in the year 2020. Many companies are engaged in laying down the building blocks of what could potentially be the future of mail distribution and delivery for the United States and even abroad: digital mailboxes.

The concept of a digital mailbox or digital mail delivery is certainly not new. In the enterprise, vendors like Esker, Océ, and Pitney Bowes offer digital mail delivery solutions whereby each piece of mail that comes into the company is scanned and delivered electronically to employee recipients. EarthClassMail is an early service for smaller businesses and consumers that also scans and manages mail. With a mix of new entrants and existing players, there is aggressive development of digital mailbox services for consumers, designed to reach every household in the United States, just like the USPS. There are a number of key players to watch in this space:

• Accenture, the worldwide consulting and outsourcing firm, is taking the approach of partnering directly with national postal services to help them develop digital mailbox services. It has clearly stated it is aiming to help global posts design their own services to compete directly against some of the independent digital mailbox services listed below.
• doxo is a technology start-up that takes a broad approach to the digital mailbox, enabling users to not only import electronic bills and statements, but also many other types of documents that can either be uploaded or scanned in via its mobile phone application.
• Manilla, started by Hearst Corporation, provides access to over 1,000 companies to enable users to consolidate and manage bills and loyalty programs, including major wireless carriers, cable & satellite TV providers, utilities, financial companies, airlines, and more. Certified Manilla partners can also present targeted advertisements to Manilla users alongside the sender’s content, which offers an intriguing TransPromo play.
• Pitney Bowes announced its Volly digital mailbox offering at the beginning of 2011, although the offering is still in beta. According to my colleague Matt Swain’s blog post on the service after its announcement, “Think of Volly as an extension of a conventional consumer bill consolidation model, incorporating other types of mail into the same platform.” There is no doubt that PB will be highlighting Volly at Graph Expo this year.
• Zumbox, another technology start-up, has made waves recently with its million-dollar giveaway contest to get people signed up for its service. The company has a unique twist on its service in that it uses your physical mail address as your digital mailbox address, as well. Like others, its concept is to digitally centralize the management of all mail being sent to a household.

There is a great deal of innovation occurring in this space right now, and considering the rapid pace of technology proliferation and adoption these days, it would not be surprising if these companies and their services make a big splash in the near future. InfoTrends is investigating this market right now, currently conducting a research study entitled The Emergence of Digital Mailbox Services: Moving Beyond Online Bill Consolidation in the U.S. This research initiative will identify the opportunity for secure digital mailbox services in the U.S. and will include a growth projection through 2015. I’m excited to see how this space shapes up, as these services could have a major influence on how we delivery, accept, and manage our mail.

If you do any regular amount of driving on highways (or walking around in major cities), you’ve probably noticed the increased presence of high-quality digital screens displaying rotating advertisements over the past few years. Commonly referred to as “digital out-of-home” or “digital place-based” advertising, these electronic billboards are popping up in a wide variety of both outdoor and indoor spaces to deliver more targeted, relevant, and cost-effective advertising to consumers.

According to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA), digital billboards make up a small percentage of the estimated 400,000+ billboards scattered across the United States, with around 2,400 digital displays currently in operation. With the Federal Highway Administration just giving its approval for advertisers to leverage “changeable electronic variable message signs” in 2007, the growing presence of digital billboards along the road and elsewhere has been quite substantial. More marketers and advertisers are putting at least some budget toward digital out-of-home advertising, which is expected to increase as more options become available.

Research firm eMarketer reports that outdoor ad spend is expected to reach $6.4 billion this year in the United States alone, and predicts this spend to increase to $7.6 billion by 2016. That’s a significant market with serious growth potential, and results in a lot of printing, especially of the wide format and grand format variety. We already know that digital media and advertising is impacting traditional print media spend related to publications, promotions, and even general collateral. Will digital media have a similar impact in the world of outdoor advertising?

There is certainly potential for digital media to have an adverse impact on traditional media. According to research conducted by another trade organization, the Digital Place-based Advertising Association (DPAA), around three-quarters of media planners surveyed indicated that digital place-based marketing will be part of their media mix spend in 2011 (note that place-based advertising also constitutes digital ads that are displayed inside taxi cabs, at gyms, in malls, and other “non-billboard” applications). That same research indicated that these planners are actually funding digital media by shifting spend from traditional outdoor advertising.

Of course, digital billboards are still relatively in their infancy, and do have some disadvantages. Ads are typically rotated every 8 to 12 seconds. If you’re advertising on a stretch of highway that is prone to traffic jams, each ad can be viewed by a lot of eyeballs. Conversely, with cars constantly zooming by at high speeds, the audience potential decreases (one of the advantages of a traditional, static billboard).

Furthermore, concerns have been raised about how distracting the bright, rotating ads can be to drivers and also to nearby residents. Massachusetts is currently conducting a crash study on the 11 digital billboards currently being piloted in the state. Prior studies reached different conclusions on whether or not digital billboards increase accidents, with further research needed. Residents of some cities with proposed digital billboards are battling them under the premise of preventing further commercialization of the landscape. Cash-strapped cities like Miami have quickly erected digital billboards to raise revenues, only to later run into legal problems with existing state and federal laws barring their placement. There are sure to be contentious battles between municipalities and media companies like Clear Channel, Lamar, Adams, and others that want to erect what some call “the next big advertising opportunity” and others call “blight” or “monstrosities”.

Regardless, there are plenty of places willing to try out digital outdoor advertising, as it has already made inroads across the United States and will certainly continue to grow. The overall outdoor market is large and on a growth path, but it’s clear that there is a shift in media budgets from traditional to digital in this space. Service providers, especially those with competency in wide/grand format and, more specifically, those that produce the billboards we see everyday, need to consider how they can get in the digital game. Could it be ad creation and preparation for digital formats? Could it be partnerships with out-of-home ad networks or even direct competition with these networks? There are many options, and they should all be explored.

 In February, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council released results of a study that show today’s marketers struggling to innovate while keeping up with exploding technology.

Dubbed Unify to Multiply Marketing Ecosystem Effectiveness* [whew; that’s a mouthful] the report shows chief marketers scrambling to centralize data, while extracting meaningful knowledge from vast volumes of transactional, behavioral, and attitudinal information. The dance has marketers seeking out partnerships with IT experts and/or relying on third-party sources to supplement customer profiling.

All the while, product life cycles are shorter and more tenuous. Consumer audiences are increasingly connected, opinionated, and virally influential. Supply chains and customer markets are more complex and distributed globally. And demand side marketing and sell-through requirements are now more resource intensive and channel-driven, requiring greater integration and alignment with the field.

It’s tough out there.

According to the white paper report sponsored by Webtrends, marketing process improvement, efficiency, and yield are directly tied to more effective use of tools—better platforms, analytics, and intelligence that improves rich media content creation, relevancy, delivery, access, control, workflow, partner collaboration, market engagement and sales lead provisioning, as well as campaign measurement and tracking.

It’s relentless out there.

Despite these pressing requirements, most marketers are hamstrung with antiquated legacy systems, an inability to “talk tech” with IT groups, and lack of resources to implement marketing automation projects. In short, tools that improve the quality and outcome of marketing decisions, as well as the effectiveness and performance of marketing teams and partners, are hard to come by.

It’s lethal out there.

This is the bad news. The good news? Well, we’re still looking for that.

In the report, the CMO Council identifies the top 10 ways marketers can create “marketing ecosystem value.” This includes the need to:

• Break down functional silos
• Institutionalize the use of data analytics
• Provide market insights + intelligence on-demand
• Transfer best-practice knowledge worldwide
• Synchronize supply and demand side operations
• Add discipline and rigor to campaign design, development, testing and delivery
• Ensure brand consistency, compliance and digital asset control
• Power the pipeline across acquisition, cultivation, and closure cycles
• Maximize customer value – relationships, revenue, and rapport
• Institute closed-loop performance measurement systems

What we haven’t been offered are the “how-tos” for breaking down functional silos or any of the rest of it. I mean, haven’t we been talking about this for years? HELP!

Source: The 20-plus page strategic brief can be downloaded here.

p.s. Why did they have to give this study such a jargon-ridden title? Yikes!

In the social media marketing world, there are plenty of tradeshows and events that you can be a part of to help further your company and network with prospective partners. You can benefit your company if you attend these events. But there are some ways you can really maximize your presence at the next big event, especially if you take the right promotional steps by utilizing social media.

On your corporate Twitter account, create a special hashtag for the event. Use it a couple times a day in the weeks leading up to the event, to generate some buzz about your presence there. Hashtags categorize tweets and make it easier for users to find similar subjects among tweets. Make sure the event also has its own Facebook event page. Post on the page, tweet to the event’s account and retweet relevant tweets.

Think beyond Facebook and Twitter as well. Make sure your colleagues and peers blog about the event and have an e-mail blast focused on it, or maybe even a webinar. The more diverse the methods of distribution, the larger the audience you will reach.

Be sure to ask questions that can spark a conversation. Social media lends itself incredibly well to conversational interaction. Ask questions that will garner some responses, and field questions from followers as well. This is a great way to gauge interest in the event and for companies to have interaction with users that they can retweet and survey. And make sure to keep a countdown to the big day! No need to overwhelm anybody, keep your social media efforts business as usual with just that daily reminder of the event added to it.

So you have done your preparation leading up to the event. The day is here! Now what?

Take pictures! Lots and lots of pictures. Borderline on taking too many. Pictures can be put on all of your social media networks. Make your followers feel like they are right at the event with you. And archive everything; it all becomes great blog content down the road. Also, video is very effective in making your audience feel like they are right with you. Beef up your YouTube channel with some great video content and also use it to spice up a blog in a post-event recap.

When you are in your event, make it very clear where you are at all times. Explain what booth you are viewing, the room you’re in, and always use hashtags. Make yourself noticeable! Use the hashtags that others are creating for the event and interact with them on Twitter. Start conversations and compel people to come to your booth. And when you do meet someone, make them remember you. Exchange social media in a way you would exchange a business card. This is important because exchanging social media accounts can lead to immediate interaction. A business card can very easily slip through the cracks and a contact can be lost.

When it’s all over, make sure you write detailed blogs and use all of the great content you generated to make all of your efforts at the event translate into a great online presence.

Digital printing is now mainstream for print production, and as such, print service providers and other companies are continuously looking for new opportunities to exploit the technology. A growing area where providers are looking to deliver differentiated offerings enabled through digital printing is photo publishing and, more broadly, photo merchandise.

InfoTrends actually has a service within our Consumer Imaging group that tracks trends within photo publishing and photo merchandise. Applications within photo publishing and photo merchandise (at least by InfoTrends’ definition) include photo cards, photo books, photo calendars, and specialty photo prints. These applications are typically sold in a physical or digital retail environment, targeted toward consumers. We expect that by 2014, the total U.S. market for photo merchandise will reach over $2 billion.

A number of service providers from small to large have gotten in the photo publishing and merchandise game over the past few years, creating a more competitive marketplace. Nonetheless, there are a number of areas that service providers can look at to find success and grab their piece of the billion-dollar photo publishing pie.

• Licensed Content: According to research firm EPM Communications, consumers worldwide spend over $100 billion annually on licensed merchandise. That’s a huge market, and fits well within many of the applications in photo publishing and merchandise. Some photo publishers are forging partnerships and deals with major brands, sports organizations, and other companies to blend personal photo content with licensed content. One great example is Josten’s OurHubBub photo book business unit, which has a relationship with NASCAR to create custom photo books that blend fans’ photos with official NASCAR imagery.
• Social Media Integration: Between Facebook and the variety of photo hosting sites like Flickr and Picasa, there are hundreds of millions of users and billions of photos that can be turned into valuable photo products. Many of these services have APIs and development kits to “plug in” or build applications to leverage users’ photos to flow them into photo publishing applications. Companies like MixBook and HotPrints can ingest photos from social networks to create high-quality photo merchandise.
• Focus on Ease-of-use: While price and quality are the top considerations when choosing a company to purchase photo merchandise from, ease of designing and ordering those products can make or break the user’s choice of completing their product and submitting their credit card info. In addition, InfoTrends research has found that once consumers buy a photo book for the first time, it is very likely they will buy another one in the next year. Making your process as easy-to-use as possible can set your offering apart from the rest.

Photo publishing and merchandise presents a tremendous opportunity for service providers to enter adjacent markets with significant revenue potential… if the offering is strong, well thought out, and differentiated. Licensed content, social media integration, and ease-of-use are three opportunities that service providers should be actively exploring.

While the use of mobile 2D barcodes such as QR codes continue to pop up in print marketing and advertising at a brisk pace, a growing chorus of pundits are questioning their long-term relevance and overall sustainability. Most notably, Dave Wieneke, a digital marketing strategist, wrote a fairly scathing article last week on AdAge titled “Why Marketers Shouldn’t Waste Their Time With QR Codes“. In essence, he states that marketers are trying to cash in on a “cool technology” and that the process for consumers to interact with these codes is too complex. To this point, Wieneke goes so far as to say that the QR code is a “dead-end technology” (similar to the CueCat), serving as a transition to richer mobile engagement technologies like Near-Field Communications (NFC).

This article prompted dozens of responses in the comment section, with some agreeing with Wieneke’s assessment and many others coming to the defense of mobile barcode utilization in marketing and advertising. Ultimately, while I think Wieneke’s statements are a bit overblown, the viability of mobile 2D barcodes well into the future is a fair question to ponder. I generally agree that many marketers, advertisers, and print service providers are implementing mobile 2D barcodes in their campaigns and collateral without much consideration of the context of placement and end-to-end user experience. I highlighted just one of many examples of poor execution last month.

The truth is, if companies keep blindly throwing mobile 2D barcodes on their campaigns and collateral, Wieneke’s and others‘ premonitions will come to bear. There are a few things that companies looking to use or currently using this technology need to consider to ensure 2D barcodes are being used in a smart and effective manner.

• Marketing Principles: One of the biggest issues I find with the inclusion of mobile 2D barcodes in marketing is that many seem to throw marketing principles out the window for the sake of using a new technology. Why are you putting a 2D barcode in your campaign in the first place? What’s the call to action? What will make people “click” on the code to enter an engaging experience? If there’s no value communicated to a viewer as to why they should engage further with the campaign, then they probably won’t.
• Context: What application are you going to leverage the 2D barcode for and where will it be displayed? Putting a QR code in ad at a location where there’s no wireless data service (e.g., the subway, dead zones) is a surefire path to failure. Also, who’s your target audience? Remember that smartphones with capabilities to actually scan and process these codes, while growing, still only make up roughly 30% of the overall mobile phone market. Furthermore, many of those smartphones don’t come pre-loaded with code readers, requiring a third-party app download. If your target is upper middle-class or affluent people between the ages of 13 and 30 that have an affinity for technology or gadgets, 2D codes may be right for you.
• Education: Perhaps there is some debate about how to marketers and advertisers approach educating people about how to scan the code they are plopping on their visuals. Many campaigns simply feature the 2D barcode with no instructional guidance whatsoever as to what to do with the code. Others do provide some type of guidance as to how to interact with the code; sometimes rather short, sometimes rather long. Since many applications are still emerging, my suggestion would be (in most instances) to include some sort of instructional text in association with the code. Even simply pointing viewers to a specific mobile app they can download can go a long way for heightening awareness and education about how to interact with mobile 2D barcodes.
• Optimization: I’ve highlighted this before, so I won’t go into too much detail, but please please please make sure the site you are linking to is optimized for viewing on a mobile phone. If you don’t spend time on the full, end-to-end experience that the user will receive, why put the code on your collateral in the first place? Delivering a bad experience does a disservice to those that really want to leverage this technology in a smart and effective manner; don’t do it.

Ultimately, it’s consumers that will decide the fate of the use of mobile 2D barcodes. If they don’t find them valuable and useful, they’ll simply stop interacting with them, and then these codes will indeed be ancient relics, just like the CueCat.

Unfortunately, there is not a lot of independent, third-party research about consumers’ and marketers’ perspectives on interacting with and using mobile 2D barcodes. InfoTrends is in the process of launching a study titled Mobile Technology: Making Print Interactive, that will be one of the first independent studies on this topic. It will include quantitative research of consumers, marketers, and service providers, as well as complementary qualitative in-depth interviews with key industry players. The study plans to launch in July. If you’re interested in sponsoring this research, please drop me an e-mail; the study is expected be completed by the fall.

It’s no secret that proprietary technology powers the printing industry. Over the years, there have been several significant milestones that work toward “opening up” systems that power printing, such as the introduction and adoption of JDF & JMF, the standardization of PDF, and the growing presence of open interfaces to connect disparate systems together. Despite these developments, I bet there are still plenty of prepress operators (and managers) out there that become incensed when they try opening up a client’s InDesign CS5 file when they only have CS4 installed. There is a great (and somewhat ironic) story from the Social Science Resource Council about their experience publishing a report on software piracy and having to deal with multiple Adobe Creative Suite versions.

Despite these issues, it’s my view that the proprietary nature that many companies operate in have contributed to research, development, and advancement in the industry as a whole. Still, my belief is that there is a place in this industry for open, collaborative projects that can be accessed and contributed to by anyone that help move the industry forward. In 2007, while I was still at RIT, an initiative called the Open Publishing Lab, or OPL, was started in the university’s School of Print Media to address these issues. According to its Website, the OPL’s mission comprises three “E’s”:

• Extend existing publishing platforms
• Enable new publishing products and business models
• Empower individuals and communities to easily tell their stories as never before

All projects conducted and released by the Open Publishing Lab are “open source,” meaning that each project is released freely to the public, including the base source code, to help meet the OPL’s aforementioned goals.

I was not really involved with the OPL while I was at RIT, although I support its mission and principles, especially because one of its core functions is connecting print-focused students with IT-focused students to collaborate on systems-based projects. It has done some great work to date including Page2Pub, a tool that enables content aggregation from the Web into an EPUB eBook for reading and printing, along with Innovation News, a platform used for the rapid collection, preparation, and production of news stories for print and electronic output. The most recent effort by the OPL is Drop2Print, the details of which were released last week in a research monograph by RIT’s Printing Industry Center. From the monograph’s executive summary:

The challenge of connecting customers (end users) to print service providers that can best meet their needs is mirrored by the challenge that many smaller print service providers face in making potential customers aware of their services. Lack of a commonvocabulary and the communication of job requirements (customer) and servicesavailable (print service providers) further complicate the process.

…

The goal of this research project was to create a prototype and model for a simple, easy-to-use tool for end users to discover the specific print service providers that meet their requirements for production and fulfillment. The resulting prototype, Drop2Print, provides an easy-to-use desktop application that leverages the technical specifications of an end user’s PDF document to simplify the discovery of appropriate print service providers. This desktop application is linked to an online database that allows the Drop2Print application to determine the print service providers in a specific location that are able to meet the specifications of the print job.

In other words, Drop2Print is designed to be an easy, interactive way for potential print buyers to find print service providers that meet their specific printing needs. Drop2Print is just one example of distributed production print solutions that have been launched in recent years. We’ve seen similar types of models come into existence in the marketplace, such as HubCast and more recently, QuarkPromote. We’ve also seen large outsourcing management organizations like InnerWorkings leverage this type of model in the enterprise. What I like about the Drop2Print model is that it’s simple, it scales to organizations of all sizes, and it’s open.

Drop2Print still needs to be developed out further, and there is a high-level road map included in the research monograph of what’s in store. Regardless, it’s an important and well-done exercise in looking at the industry, defining a need, and working to develop a solution to meet that need. Best of all, it’s developed and documented in a completely open and transparent way, helping it serve as an educational tool for the industry that can be built upon by a broader community. I think the industry needs more of this type of open collaboration, and it’s great to see the OPL engaging in activities that work toward that goal.

In her book, Stephen Sondheim: A Life, Meryle Secrest quotes composer Steven Sondheim on his friend and colleague Leonard Bernstein’s consistent failure to produce any significant music after his great masterpiece “West Side Story.” Sondheim says Bernstein developed “a bad case of importantitis.” That is, anything he touched, by self- definition, had to have the weight and portent of the great.

Importantitis can sure be a killer of creativity and corporate health for the entrepreneur, as well as for the artist. I was reminded about this by the dizzying fall from grace of Mark Hurd at Hewlett Packard, a man of achievement and power brought low by ethics violations and the apparent attitude that he was above the rules. (Or who can forget Leona Helmsley‘s famous statement that the rules apply only to “the little people.”)

Jonah Lehrer wrote an article  on this in the Wall Street Journal called “The Power Trip”. Lehrer notes what psychologists call the “paradox of power.” That is, the very traits which help leaders rise to power disappear once they ascend. Instead of being courteous, honest and outgoing they often become impulsive, reckless and rude—subject to hubristic overreach and Icarus-like arrogance. He quotes extensively from University of California, Berkely psychologist Dacher Keltner‘s scientific findings from studies of power and success. Dr. Keltner states, “When you give people power, they basically start acting like fools. They flirt inappropriately, tease in a hostile fashion, and become totally impulsive.” Dr. Keltner goes on the compare the feeling of power to brain damage, stating that people with great power tend to behave like neurological patients with a damaged orbito-frontal lobe, a brain area essential for empathy and decision-making.

An entrepreneur is usually a boss. He is a person of power, if only in his own very small pond. As such, I believe it is crucial to avoid importantitis. At my own outsourced executive sales firm, Corporate Rain International, I try to guard against this in several ways. One is I never stop cold-calling. At this point I could have other people take over this task completely for me. But I want to experience what my associates and employees experience for clients each day, which includes a great deal of rejection. Another way Is that I genuinely try to never employ anyone who isn’t better than myself, and then I listen to their input.

In a recent article, Patrick Caddell, a Democratic pollster, observes there is an increasing inability of executives to admit mistakes, even including both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and how unuseful a quality this is in an executive. He says, “As we’ve seen again and again over the past few years, admitting a mistake is almost constitutionally impossible for today’s corporate chiefs and even harder for politicians.”

Thomas Bailey Aldrich states in “Ponkapog Papers” (1903), “The possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man. There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks.” Thanks, Thomas.

By Andy Gerry

I work at a company that is heavily focused on the online user experience for consumer and corporate identity risk management services – and I’m also a print guy. You might think that print wouldn’t be that important of a competency for us, but you would be wrong. Intersections Inc.  is recognized as the preferred partner of major financial institutions providing custom identity management solutions. Clients leverage Intersections’ identity management solutions, offered under their own privately branded labels.

Private labeling. Branding. Corporate Identity– –just a few reasons print is important.

Supporting our customers’ unique brands online is relatively straight forward; doing the same in print is more complex and expensive.  While many of our customers are serviced online for monitoring, alerts and extensive drill-down reports, the majority of our customers still prefer printed fulfillment kits.   

Each customer who successfully enrolls in one of our credit and identity risk management services, either through one of our corporate partners or directly with Intersections, is sent a printed guide for using the services. It is a welcome kit, a user guide, and almost always contains their personal credit data and scores.  This welcome kit sets the tone for the quality of the service that they have enrolled in.

In the past, Intersections created these guides by matching offset printed covers with dynamically produced booklet content. The covers were on heavy, die-cut stock in full color and the booklets were dynamically generated using Group1’s DOC1 and printed in black and white on an IBM 4100 with near-line booklet maker.  While the content was informative and the covers were produced using our clients’ brand colors, the inside didn’t offer a customer experience that was comparable to what Intersections delivers online. For those customers who preferred print to online, there was a tangible lack of color and brand palate inside the guide.

We are always trying to deliver greater flexibility and value to our direct clients – the financial institutions who private label our products – as well as the end consumers of those products. By early 2009 we were convinced that going to a dynamic, full-color environment was the way to remain the leader in our industry. After an exhaustive evaluation of technologies on the market, considering both toner and inkjet solutions from a variety of manufacturers, in 2009 we selected the Océ JetStream 1000 system for printing and GMC PrintNet to compose the documents.

The redesign, reengineering and redeployment of our guides and other documents on the new platform has been tremendously successful. Not only can we support dynamic branding with ease, but we can use color dynamically to highlight key information for consumers and draw their attention to personalized information, much the same way that we do online.  This is not to gloss over the complexity and the hard work it took to architect a high integrity solution that supports multiple partners in a true white paper environment.  It took longer than originally scoped and we learned many lessons on the way.

The good news is that originally we knew we needed two engines for redundancy and failover, but were unsure if enough of our clients would be willing to adopt color to warrant the two engines.  The best case has happened and by the end of the year the majority of our materials will now be printed in full on demand color in our new environment.  Along the way we’ve eliminated the risk of managing preprinted inventories, eliminated the matching process and are able to deliver a superior product to clients and our end customers in a very cost-effective way. Making the printed experience consistent with the online experience – priceless!

Since the conversion to full color, Intersections’ financial services product was rated “Best in Class” by Javelin Strategy & Research (September 2010) and we were ranked among the 500 Top Technology Innovators Across America (2010 InformationWeek 500, September 2010). I’d like to think that us print guys (and gals) had something to do with that!

I’m insecure, dammit. I sure wish I wasn’t. Pathetic, huh, for a guy posing as an expert in such a testosterone-fueled, masculine-imaged, aggressive profession as sales? But when I started my career as an entrepreneurial salesman my hands used to shake when I met with the C-suite folk I was pitching. That doesn’t happen any more, but the inner feeling of not being quite enough is an ineluctable closeted demon still lurking somewhere beneath a late-blooming polished professional.

That said, I know everyone suffers at least occasional feelings of powerlessness and low self-esteem. To this point, I was caught recently by an interesting article about the work of Professor Amy J.C. Cuddy of the Harvard Business School. In an article titled “Power Posing: Brief Nonverbal Displays Affect Neuroendocrine Levels and Risk Tolerance“, Professor Cuddy reveals that holding “power poses” for brief periods stimulates higher levels of testosterone (the hormone linked to power and dominance) and lower levels of cortisol (the stress hormone that can help cause hypertension and impaired immune functioning).

Reporting on Cuddy’s research Julia Hanna, Associate Editor of the HBS Alumni Bulletin, states,

“Controlling for subjects’ baseline levels of both [testosterone and cortisol], Cuddy and her coauthors found that high-power poses decreased cortisol by about 25% and increased testosterone by about 19% for both men and women. In contrast, low-power poses increased cortisol about 17% and decreased testosterone about 10%. Not surprisingly, high-power posers of both sexes also reported greater feelings of being powerful and in charge.”

I’m trying one of Cuddy’s power poses right now in my office. I have my feet up on my desk, hands behind my head and it does seem to have some emotionally salubrious, empowering effect. (Begone low self-esteem!  Get thee to a nunnery!  I abjure your presence!)

At any rate these power poses might at least prove a useful, practical preparation for those fragile, not-at-your best days when you still have to sally forth to kill the sales dragon.

William Hazlitt says in “Characteristics” (1823), “As is our confidence, so is our capacity.” Thank you, William.