Mixing With Marketers --Sherburne

I RECENTLY had the opportunity to attend ad:tech at Moscone West in San Francisco. This conference and trade show takes place annually in nine different venues around the globe (www.ad-tech.com). It is an interactive advertising and technology conference and exhibition that blends keynote speakers, topic-driven panels and workshops to provide attendees with the tools and techniques they need to compete in a changing world. Although I don't have actual attendance figures, it was a busy show. The second-day keynote had more than 1,000 people present, compared to some 400 attending keynotes at the recent On Demand conference in Philadelphia. Also, unlike most of the printing shows I have been to lately, the conference sessions were packed.

Atypical Printing Show
The show featured 235 exhibitors, most of whom I am sure you have never heard. Many had tabletop exhibits, but there were some larger booths, too. Exhibits took up hall space on two different floors. Some recognizable names included Google, FOX Networks, Acxiom (database marketing), Publishers Clearinghouse and SuperPages (the online part of the business).

If you ever attended the Seybold conference in the good old days, ad:tech would bring back memories of that time. It was a time when the printing industry was in a period of dramatic transition. Desktop publishing and electronic prepress were just starting to take hold, changing the way we did things in very big ways. Seybold was a place where the old guard and the new guard could meet halfway and work together to manage through this transition.

Sadly, there really is no trade show on our side of the digital wall that meets those needs today. That's why I attended ad:tech. I wanted to see what was really going on out there, and how it might relate to the transition our industry is going through today.

Of the 235 exhibitors, there was only one exhibitor that you might see at a printing industry trade show, and that was Printable. It should be commended for making the investment to attend. I spoke to a Printable representative while I was at the show and learned that it experienced very good traffic based on a personalized direct mail campaign it sent to ad:tech attendees.

One of the drivers for Printable attending this show is the increasing amount of interest it has seen from the enterprise side. More companies want to take control of the integrated campaign process and are looking at solutions like Printable to help them do so. This may be because print service providers are not moving quickly enough, or because marketers are not aware of all of the various services that printers offer today. Either way, it is evidence of an end run on the part of enterprises that could push our sagging industry into even more of a commodity mode unless we move quickly to add the services marketers are looking for, and to sell ourselves more effectively to marketers and print buyers.

Throughout the conference sessions I attended, print was the elephant in the room. There were sideways mentions, every once in a while, like "This doesn't mean that we won't print stuff." And, in all fairness, the show was not focused on print. But, at the same time, this is where marketers come to learn about the latest technology affecting their craft. The show was definitely focused on the media mix of the future, and print was absent.

Of particular note was the ad:tech boot camp, a series of 12 sessions during three days. Topics ranged from "The Modern Agency" and "Marketing Effectiveness—Improving Accountability and Returns to Impact Business Performance," to "Defining the New Media Currency—How to Bring Traditional Metrics Online." These are surely topics in which print plays a role. But the decision-making marketers are only hearing the digital side of the story.

Of particular note was a keynote panel presented by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). Panelists included Jeff Berman, president of sales and marketing, MySpace; Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO of Denuo, an agency; Carol Kruse, vice president of global interactive marketing, The Coca-Cola Co.; and Neil Ashe, president of CBS Interactive.

Kruse made a couple of interesting statements during the session. First, she said, "We have pushed the demand for metrics. If you want to move money from TV or print to digital, you have to have facts. We pushed out the industry that had no metrics or measurement; now the pendulum has swung too far, and we have forgotten about great advertising and great marketing." Later in the discussion, she added, "Maybe the brand owner's role is marrying the two—bridging the two sides. You can't get ingrained in one or the other."

Print's Important Role

These are positive words for the printing industry if we, as an industry, shift our focus to what matters to customers, especially at the marketing executive level, and work to meet those needs. It means that marketers are starting to question the tilting of the media mix to all digital. Inside of that, though, there is a need for us to clearly understand the new role of print in the media mix. And, it is a new role. We can't be defensive about it. Too often I hear people say things like, "Print is valuable because you can fold it up, put it in your pocket and take it with you," or something similar. This misses the point entirely. I can put my Blackberry or iPhone in my pocket and take a lot more with me!

But print does have an important role to play. Intuitively, I think we know what it is. But we have done an abysmal job of articulating it to those who matter: the marketers who have the dollars to spend.

I hope that reading this column has given you some new insights into how you should be preparing your business for a successful future. We are starting to see the slowdown slow down, and while the recovery is likely to be long and slow, it is coming. This is the perfect time to be restructuring your business to meet the needs of a very different industry when we come out of the back end of this.

The structural change we were already going through—driven by the Internet and the way people are now using print differently—has been accelerated by the economic crisis. As one of the ad:tech panelists stated, "The future does not fit in the containers of the past."

The next U.S. ad:tech takes place in Chicago September 1-2, right before PRINT 09, followed by a November session in New York. Will you be there? There is much to learn about the future of business communications and, by association, what the future of the printing industry will look like. PI

—Cary Sherburne

About the Author
Cary Sherburne is a well-known author, journalist and marketing consultant whose practice is focused on marketing communications strategies for the printing and publishing industries. She has written six books, including "Digital Paths to Profit," published by NAPL; and, most recently, "No-Nonsense Innovation: Practical Strategies for Success," written with Bill Lowe, the father of the IBM PC. She can be contacted at Cary@SherburneAssociates.com.