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.

The digital color print market has experienced dramatic changes over the past year. Inkjet technology is taking hold, providing organizations with more choices for addressing high-volume transactional/direct mail applications and offering an affordable alternative to pre-printed color shells. These new developments make it possible to produce full color variable data and image-oriented documents where personalized information was historically limited to monochrome text. Océ’s JetStream printers offer high quality and are cost-effective at the highest speeds, even if the documents contain the corporate logo and footers only, or graphs, pictures, and full-color photos. The result is a significant enhancement to marketing communications as well as positive ramifications for overall operations.

Color Communicates
There is no question about the role that color plays in business communications. Color increases brand recognition and improves response rates. Organizations use color strategically depending on the purpose of the document. By blending transaction data and full color customer-specific messages into sophisticated communications, you can turn transaction documents (e.g., bills, statements, purchase orders) into attention-grabbing marketing tools that reinforce branding and promote a dialogue with customers to cross-sell and up-sell products and services. Blending transaction data with personalized color enables you to avoid the “swamp effect” of classical mass mailings because you have an all-in-one document instead of a separate promotional flyer.

Business documents that need to communicate important information rely on color to make them reader-friendly. The advent of inkjet technology means that business document content previously printed in gray scale can affordably be rendered in vivid full color using unprinted paper. Color logos, branding elements, charts, data-driven graphics, key marketing messages, and critical document elements (like the amount due) can simply be printed simultaneously in color on Océ JetStream devices along with the transaction data.

Speed
“White paper in and color out” also delivers improved turnaround time. For today’s marketing executives, nothing is more important than time-to-market. The vast majority of the direct mail produced today is pre-printed on offset and digitally overprinted in monochrome. The production of mass direct mail in digital full process color is still in its early stages. The elimination of pre-printed shells through full-color digital direct mail reduces the time-to-market for direct mail campaigns (from design to distribution) from weeks to days.

Operational Excellence
Imagine the improvements and cost-savings in warehousing, processes, and workflow when pre-printed forms are eliminated. Users of Océ JetStream products have highlighted key areas where their clients achieved significant savings by going to a white paper solution. These include:

• A reduction in postal costs by consolidating jobs into a single run, thereby increasing the number of mail pieces that qualify for the maximum postal discounts

• A reduction in storage and management of multiple paper stocks and selective inserts

• The elimination of separate direct mail pieces sent to existing customers (replacement with full page, dynamic in-statement promotions

In many cases, clients didn’t just save money… they made money. End-users as well as service providers benefited from the implementation of a white paper solution. Service providers were able to reduce costs associated with inventory management, paper changes, and improved inserter efficiency. They were also able to reduce turnaround times and improve quality metrics. One Océ user, DST Output, estimated that going with a full-color, white-paper-in solution that also supported MICR enabled the company to produce two to three times the volume with half the warehouse space and 75% less staff.

The Simple Message
High-speed inkjet and “white paper in, color out” is delivering value to marketers and service providers alike. It provides enhanced communications and market opportunity through affordable digital color and the associated improvement in response rates, time to market, and reduced call center traffic. For high-volume producers, it is also becoming an operational imperative for overall cost reduction.

Yurchak Printing, Inc. was founded in 1998 in the heart of Amish country (Landisville, Pennsylvania). Its goal was to offer high-quality, short-run digital book manufacturing services to the publishing industry, manufacturing and service companies, professional associations, government agencies, and colleges and universities. The company sought to provide a service portfolio that managed the document lifecycle and extended the value of publications.

Yurchak Printing’s service offerings were created to fulfill a need brought about by the digital age. By creating innovative solutions, Founder and CEO John Yurchak, Jr. has built an organization that is a leader in digital short-run book manufacturing. The company specializes in solutions for the production of directories, periodicals, journals, reference books, fine edition books, illustrated books, bibles, children’s books, bound galleys, and university press books. Yurchak Printing deals with run lengths from 1 to 1,500.

It Starts with a Vision

With over 40 years of observing the marketplace, John Yurchak had great intuition about market trends. He notes, “beginning in the mid-1980s, I saw that print runs were getting shorter and shorter. As volumes got smaller, the equipment I used – along with the associated plates, negatives, presses, and high labor and finishing costs – got to be very cumbersome. With the advent of digital printing in the 1990s, I saw a new opportunity to compete with short-run offset work. I saw a new market opening in short-run book publishing.”

Keeping Up with the Changing Market

End-users of hardcopy reference materials include colleges, universities, accounting firms, attorneys, and the medical field. Publishers want to print smaller quantities on demand to eliminate costly storage. There is also intense pressure to keep content up-to-date, requiring continual content modifications and driving shorter runs. According to Yurchak, “Even with all the information available on the Internet, there is a niche market for quantities ranging from 10 to 1,000 that require a short turnaround time. People want loose-leaf, hard-bound, and perfect bound reference materials.”

Lightweight Stocks with Blazing Speed

Yurchak went on to say, “We partnered with Océ for a number of reasons. With our focus on reference materials, printing on lightweight paper has become our specialty. For continuous printing on lightweight paper, Océ was the unquestionable choice.”

A flexible and powerful workflow was key for the quick delivery of a variety of jobs. Océ automated the book production software capabilities, providing Yurchak with a more hands-free, lower-cost approach. This translated into fewer errors, less manual handling, greater service consistency, and more accurate monitoring.

 The best print quality is critical for Yurchak customers. The company uses a variety of Océ devices, including the ColorStream 10000 Flex with Hunkeler Finishing, VarioPrint 6250, and VarioStream 9230 with Hunkeler Finishing. Yurchak explained, “Charts and graphs are important for scientific materials, but math books require clear images for formulas. We need quality without compromise, and Océ has delivered.”

 John Yurchak, Jr. had a tremendous vision when digital print was still in its infancy, but Océ has helped his company move to the next level. He concludes, “Océ hardware and software solutions have helped us create an exceptional business in the highly competitive world of digital publishing.”

Learn more about Yurchak, Printing Inc. by watching the video below!

Ever heard this one before? A print buyer sends the specs for a job specifying “recycled paper”.

We’re talking about recycled “content” here, which is simply any percentage of the paper made from fiber (paper) that has been diverted from a waste stream. This is further broken down into pre- and post-consumer waste components. Commonly, but not always, it’s only the post-consumer portion that’s reported on invoices or printed on the piece its self.

Now, especially since the FTC’s proposals for their new Green Guides have hit the streets, many potentially-effected entities are waiting for the storm concerning the definition of post-consumer waste. This may not seem like a big thing, but it is.

It’s more important than ever now to define “recycled content”. For instance, did you know that under the FTC’s current as well as their proposed guideline, a specific edition of printed matter, say a magazine issue, can be considered either pre-or post-consumer waste depending on where it lives when it’s recycled?

Post-consumer reclaimed/recycled/recovered waste/fiber (PCW or PCRF) definitions are going to become a touchy issue in the coming months. Once the FTC codifies their definition, it will become the de facto standard, and no matter which way the wind blows, the FTC will wind up continuing to put their definition at odds with the interests of others.

The current FTC Guides provide that marketers may make a recycled content claim from materials which have been reclaimed either during the manufacturing process (pre-consumer) or after consumer use (post-consumer). This sounds pretty straight-forward.

Furthermore, the FTC aligns their definition of PCW with that of the EPA’s: “Fiber such as paper, paperboard, and fibrous materials from retail stores, office buildings, homes, and so forth, after they have passed through their end-use as a consumer item; all paper, paperboard, and fibrous materials that enter and are collected from municipal solid waste.”

ISO 14021 however defines post-consumer as: “Material generated by households or by commercial, industrial and institutional facilities in their role as end-users of the product, which can no longer be used for its intended purpose. This includes returns of material from the distribution chain.” A definite difference of opinion.

When it comes to paper certification schemes, under current standards, both FSC and SFI subscribe to the FTC/EPA definitions (SFI actually requires alignment with the FTC rulings no matter what), however PEFC adheres to the ISO definition. That’s where the fun begins.

In response to the new FTC draft, many mills, recyclers and other groups have commented on the wisdom of the ISO definition noting that the FTC Guides should incorporate those definitions of post-consumer recycled content because competing definitions currently cause consumer confusion.

The reality can be summed up to intent. Is the intent that all material in its finished form has an equal recycled value no matter whether it has reached the end user/point of intended use or not? One can certainly argue that a publication which is remaindered (i.e.; never distributed) being exactly the same product as one that was read by the end-user, has exactly the same value in the recovery stream.

We don’t know as of yet which way the FTC will decide to go, but one thing is certain. Somebody’s not going to be happy. If the Guides are published as proposed, does it mean that merchants and printers need to watch all imports for the stated PCW content because they adhere to the ISO definition? Or will international mills have to adjust their PCW standards for exports to the US? It does present an interesting conundrum.

If FTC does adopt the ISO definition what happens to the FSC standards? Will they lower them to fit? Probably not, partially because of one interesting development; FSC released new trademark standards this past spring. The recycled mobius which used to convey the PCW content now conveys all recycled content. I find this a highly interesting development in conveying the message that reclaimed materials as a whole are equally valued.

As a final comment and case study, NewLeaf Reincarnation Matte was first released as a 50% pre and 50% post-consumer waste product (now 60% PCW). Under FSC standards both then and now, in order to use an FSC Recycled label there had to be at least 85% PCW, which meant that although 100% recycled, the FSC Mixed label with a 50% in the mobius had to be used for this product. Now under the new standard, though it’s still an FSC Mixed product, the mobius can state 100%. As Arte Johnson used to say, “Verrry Interesting…”

Hopefully this past summer represents more than great vacations, and marks an inflection point for our industry from the hunkering-down strategies during the recession to optimism and planning for future opportunities.

The timing is perfect to explore these opportunities as the conference and trade show season starts to heat up. While webinars are a great way to take an intensive look into specific topics, the trade shows allow you to take a deep dive and learn best practices from your peers, explore new technologies and new and exciting business models. Some events are more invested in conference sessions while others focus on the show floor – some do a pretty good job of balancing both.

For example, print providers and application owners alike may consider attending the Document Strategy Forum in Chicago (September 13th – 15^th). This show will help you understand the changing requirements for mission critical business communication – mostly oriented to transaction printing with some multi-channel communications sessions. This event is more conference and less tradeshow and is a good place to network without being overwhelmed.

The favorite in the printing industry is Graph Expo, which is being held October 3^rd through 6^th at the McCormick Place in Chicago. Most of our industry segments are represented at this show, including graphic arts, books, newspapers, direct mail, transaction, display graphics, and labels and packaging. The event has a big conference and a big tradeshow – there is a lot to see and learn across all of these segments.

For a deeper dive into the specialty market, SGIA 10 in Las Vegas might be the right show for you (October 12^th through 15^th). If you want to learn how to produce images that end up on retail floors, vehicles, textiles, ceramics, and bathroom sinks, then this is definitely a must attend show.  If you want to take an even deeper dive into the textile market, perhaps you should attend the IFAI Expo Americas 2010 show in Orlando.

Or, the photography market might be beckoning you. PhotoPlus Expo will be held in NYC (October 28^th – 30^th). This is a perennial favorite for the professional photography industry.

Many of our industry associations also have niche conferences and I suspect that attendance at these events will be much higher than prior years. Often attending these conferences enables discounts on membership and future events and webinars. Supporting these industry associations also tends to pay dividends for our industry. That’s one of the many reasons that Oce supports them. For example, Oce is sponsoring the Pacific Printing and Imaging Association’s fall conference (www.pacprinting.org), and the PINE (www.pine.org) Print Management Conference in Newport, RI (October 16^th – 19^th). Printing Industries of America (PIA) will be hosting their Converge conference (November 6^th – 9^th). This is a good show to explore the latest in new technologies and cross-media trends.

These are just some of the industry events that I’m considering attending. If you haven’t been to any of these events before, I highly encourage you to look into them. For those of you who are regulars, I look forward to reconnecting. I’d also be interested in hearing feedback on these shows and recommendations of others that do a particularly good job on either the educational or tradeshow aspects of the event.

Printers! Take Your Mark! Get Set! GO!

. . . Or maybe I should be saying Marketers Take Your Mark. Either way, I’m seeing example after example of why printed communications need to become increasingly nimble to stay relevant in the marketing mix. I was inspired by a recent post from Pat Allen of Rock the Boat Marketing (and by the Old Spice Guy video embedded in the post)

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According to Pat, “the tilt toward real-time communicating exposes what we believe to be the greatest weakness in investment product communicating: Reacting after the fact and on a delay.” While she is looking at the asset management industry through a marketing lens – you could easily point that same lens at print service providers and in-house shops. “The Old Spice guy work is an excellent demonstration of an emerging communications competency: the preparing to improvise, the organizing to be able to react in the moment to external stimulus,” says Pat.

Old Spice Guy says “Now I’m on a boat. Look in your hand. Look back at me. Now I’m on a ship. Look at your man. Look back at me. I’m on a horse.” Can your communications shift that quickly – and look that good doing it? (Phew!)

There have been several posts recently about combining print and other digital marketing channels. Most frequently referenced is putting PURLs on direct mail. You know what? That’s already old hat. PURLs provide an additional channel for the recipient, which is good, but it is not necessarily preparing the marketer to be able to  react quickly to external stimulus from social media sites, breaking news or other market activity.

We need to enable our print campaigns to launch on a dime in support of trends gleaned from online activity. Of course, we will want to communicate with people who are already online through online means – but why not extend the learning to be able to launch the same great message to the customers we know don’t use our online channels? Or simply reinforce the online message with a tangible printed campaign?

Allen cites a social media presentation by Matthew Guiste, category manager for social media at Starbucks and successful revenue-generating programs that involved a rapid exchange of information, internally and externally. Starbucks identified mini-trends from activity on Facebook and Twitter and worked quickly to syndicate that content across multiple other social media outlets. They could also have launched a direct mail campaign – but sadly – with the response times of most organizations today – not fast enough to ride the wave of the current trend.

For direct mail (and transactional communications) to gain a broader piece of the “social media response” pie it will need to be faster and more collaborative with what is now a social media silo. If the collaboration and rapid publishing tools can be put in place – with workflows that link social media monitoring, analytics, content management, approval and production approvals – social media can be a great friend to digital printing rather than a competitor.

So, look at your social media channels. Look back at me. Look at your direct mail. Look back at me. Anything is possible. I’m on a plane (Seriously, I am.)

“In a difficult economy like this marketing budgets are tight. The only projects that get funded are the ones that can prove strong ROI. That’s why you need a way to prove to clients that your solutions will deliver.”

This quote came from a November 18 press release from Caslon & Company promoting a PODi Webinar, “Promoting the Value of Your Solution.” The seminar is designed to promote Caslon & Company’s Value Calculators, a tool for determining ROI projections from 1:1 printing jobs, which I think is a terrific idea.

But the thing that struck me in reading this was the spate of discussions I’ve had recently in which it’s become clear that proving value for a 1:1 printing campaign is the all-important first step, but it’s not enough by itself. Even the most successful 1:1 applications — in which the results are measured and recorded — are often not repeated. This is something that has proven to be extremely frustrating even for the most proactive 1:1 printing / marketing solutions providers.

Recently, I’ve been posting this question in various areas of LinkedIn. Here are some of the interesting and insightful reasons that have been shared with me.

• Clients do not follow up and verify results.

(Which leads to the question: Are printers following up to find out why clients may not be repeating? If it’s a matter of too much time and effort, are these printers letting their customers mistakenly think that repeat applications take the same time commitment as the initial deployment—and if so . . . why?

• Despite the results, the projects just take too long and are too time-consuming. Marketers like the results but just don’t want to put that much work in again.
• The sales cycle is so long that, once a project is completed, the original marketing team or individual at the company who spearheaded the project has moved on and the printer’s salesperson must start from scratch.

And thanks to Peter Wann, industry consultant, for bringing up this very overlooked but critical disconnect in the process:

• Clients may track response rates, but they don’t track conversion rates. If the client isn’t tracking the conversion rate, the results may not be tracking back to the original campaign.

This insight is particularly thought-provoking and may be one of the dark underbellies of the 1:1 (personalized) printing sales process. As with all challenges facing this marketplace, the solutions won’t be simple or easy, but they start with acknowledgement of the problem, followed by frank and open discussion.

Have your insights or experience to share? Comment on this post or log into my profile on LinkedIn and click on the Answers link and share them!

Is digital printing a production technology? Or a marketing strategy? “Digital Printing: Transforming Business and Marketing Models,” part of Heidi Tolliver-Nigro’s Marketer’s Primer Series, argues for the latter. It presents digital production not as technology in the domain of print buyers and production managers but as the foundation of a comprehensive strategy for changing the way marketers look at document management and marketing.

This report is broken down into five sections.

Section 1: What digital printing is, along with its benefits and drawbacks from a marketing perspective. Examines traditional “sticking points,” including binding and finishing and the availability of substrates. How these characteristics drive key marketing applications.

Section 2: A closer look at each of these applications. Each discussion includes a series of short case studies in each of eight marketing classifications that provide key insights into how these applications are used in the real world.

Section 3: New ways of evaluating cost critical to digital printing success, including cost per piece, cost per lead, and ROI. Hypotheticals are used to drive the points home.

Section 4: Five “critical success factors” that enable marketers to take maximum advantage of digital printing technology. Includes key insights into helping marketers choose the right service provider.

Section 5: Final conclusions and additional resources as a next step.

The goal of the report is for marketers to be left with the understanding that the importance of digital printing has nothing to do with the technology—its costs, its output capabilities, or the applications it can produce, although many of them are discussed. It’s about transforming how they think about marketing.

The important thing is not digital printing technology itself, but the way it can be combined with other technologies (particularly databases, email, wireless, and the Internet) to create broader solutions that make a real difference in how business market their products, as well as how they communicate with customers on a short-term and long-term basis and present their brands.

The information is presented both from the perspective of small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), as well as large corporate marketers.

Single-user versions of the report can be purchased from the What They Think store, as well as from the Digital Printing Reports website. Licensed versions for internal and external distribution can be purchased from Research and Markets and Market Research, as well as from the Digital Printing Reports website.

“Digital Printing: Transforming Business and Marketing Models” is part of Heidi Tolliver-Nigro’s Marketer’s Primer Series, which also includes “1:1 (Personalized) Printing: Boosting Profits Through Relevance” and “Web-to-Print: Transforming Document Management and Marketing Models.” All three primers are designed both as authoritative primers for marketers and as internal training tools for printers.