Consolidated Graphics (CGX) Commits to Digital, Personalization Technologies

By Erik Cagle

CGX Does Social

Social media is a hit-and-miss phenomenon in the printing industry. Some of the major players embrace it, such as Quad/Graphics while others have little use for the Facebooks, Twitters, LinkedIns and YouTubes of the Internet.

With so little history to judge it by, there's little empirical evidence that suggests an active social media platform provides a competitive advantage. But as the trend du jour, there's little point to ignoring the possibilities it may offer. In the case of Consolidated Graphics, the Houston-based printer is still getting its feet wet. It's active on the TweetDeck and has a careers page and a fan page on Facebook. There is a corporate blog as well.

CGX hasn't forgotten about YouTube, either, as it has a video channel there worth checking out.

Jim Cohen, CGX's dean of all things merger and acquisition, has his own blog on the subject of printing industry M&A.

"We've hired someone who's really helping us in the area of social networking," notes Aaron Grohs, executive vice president of sales and marketing at CGX. "We dipped our toe in the water during emerge, with a lot of people tweeting and the generally creating information about the event. And our new Website (was) scheduled to go live in July.

"If we're going to be the thought leader in the industry, showing people what can be done with technology through events like emerge, we've got to be constantly talking about it. Social networking's a great way to do that, because it's free for the most part, and its how people like to be communicated with these days."

Speaking of technology, the 2010 CGX Annual Report that went live in June included quick response (QR) codes. "We're just doing more of what we talk to our customers about every year," Grohs points out. "It's all about technology."

Commercial printing  is alive and well. Sure, it   doesn't look exactly the way it did 10 to 15 years ago, and technology has stretched its definition like Silly Putty. But, perhaps the industry has gotten too wrapped up in definitions; after all, some companies have taken great pains to hide their printing roots with nebulous monikers that are meant to conjure up the visage of a single-source solution provider. And printing just happens to be part of that solution.

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Consolidated Graphics: The Dukes of Digital