JOE DUNCAN Q&A — Outside Looking In

Joe Duncan has sat on both sides of the buyer/print provider fence, providing him with a unique industry perspective. With an extensive graphic arts industry background, Duncan joined Leo Burnett USA in 2001 where he currently serves as vice president, director of print innovation and technology.

Past print production and sales positions included stints at Madden Communications and Sells Printing, among others. An active participant in industry associations, Duncan chaired the 2005 Spectrum conference and was presented a Luminaire Award from the P3 printing production association in New York earlier this year.

He talked recently with Mark Michelson, editor-in-chief, to provide his keen insight on the current state of the industry, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.

PI: Having an extensive background in printing, how has your industry perspective changed now that you are on the agency side of the business working at Leo Burnett USA (LBCO)?

DUNCAN: I was fortunate to have several experiences that shaped my understanding of the value that print offers. Very early in my career, it became clear that if I did not differentiate the value of what I was involved in, at whatever stage of production a project was in, the end result would be a commodity.

Both the advertising industry and the graphic arts world are under-going evolutionary change, enabled by technology, that’s changing the way we all communicate. My experiences on the print side of the world have helped me at LBCO. Not only doing what I have learned to do—manage print—but also to deal with process of change and how to get people to be part of what they usually try very hard to avoid.

The fun part of that change for me, personally, is the opportunity to learn and collaborate at the earliest creative stages, in an effort to provide flawless execution to great ideas. Like a lot of printers, I would complain regularly about the people who create files “not knowing how to do it the right way.” Today, I am more than a bit contrite knowing that it takes a little more effort by all parties concerned to understand what needs to be created and how to execute it. Add a liberal helping of speed to market, and the entire print supply chain has a tremendous opportunity when engaged.

PI: Since you also have a graphic arts sales background, what new skills do today’s print salespeople need to be successful?

DUNCAN: The biggest change for a print salesperson today is that they are probably most successful when they do not sell print! The ability to understand a client’s business, ask questions and listen—and then create a value proposition that addresses real problems faced by the customer—is still the best method to create strategic relationships that revolve around print. But focus on the ease of how it may be created, used, managed or measured.

And, I know this is overused, but the fact is that our industry is not a 40-hour per week job. You must have a passion to make this a career and, now more than ever, that passion must be accompanied by work ethic, attention to detail and dogged persistence. The people I view succeeding in our industry must have those qualities to excel.

PI: What printing-related technologies do you think show the most promise for growth and industry profitability?

DUNCAN: I will defer from naming a technology, although color-managed monitor proofing is a favorite of ours here at LBCO. There are great individual technologies automating every facet of our industry. The choices are more complex than they have ever been, and the pressure to be “current” has never been more intense.

Yet we believe that the real opportunity is the integration of tools/components into a workflow, supported by a process to efficiently deliver and measure the desired results. I will not bore you with the challenge of doing that in a creative environment, but then the reward of achievement in this project is also high. Therefore, the risk is weighed appropriately.

PI: What role will print increasingly play as part of an overall communications campaign?

DUNCAN: We believe that the ability to measure the effectiveness of any tactic—not just print—is going to be the barometer that impacts how marketers are going to allocate their dollars going forward. The ability to target printed communications in a market-responsive window is going to be a large part of the message to the customer.

Shorter runs, more customization/personalization and more frequent points of engagement are going to become the norm for publishing, direct mail, retail and collateral—even Out-of-Home. The ability to differentiate a message or product in the stream of ads and marketing we all receive today will become even more critical, and more closely measured.

The interesting part of this next era of communication is that everyone—the media companies, the marketer, the advertising and direct marketing agencies—are all in the same boat. This is a new era with many choices on how to communicate to consumers. Everyone, not just print, is looking for the right mix, the right combination of what to say, how to say it and when to say it.

PI: What advice can you give to commercial printers to reinvent their businesses?

DUNCAN: The hardest part of running a print environment is striking a balance between the obvious pressures of what choices to make in reinvesting in the physical plant and the much harder choices about how to focus your human capital. Too often I have seen companies talk about selling solutions or integrated platforms, but then compensate or incent their people based on how they “fill up the metal” or how many jobs they sell.

If printing is going to survive, it must be immersed in value to the customer segment that it is targeting. The selling model needs to be more attuned to what value a partner can add to fulfill the prospect’s needs. I do not see printing, as a standalone commodity, as a profitable venture in the U.S. in the foreseeable future. Find out where your prospects/customers need help, create a plan on how to integrate those services around your print platform and sell solutions, not print jobs.

PI: What effect will foreign competition, such as printers based in China, have on U.S. print providers in an increasingly global environment?

DUNCAN: Every one of our clients is acting on global sourcing—it’s not an option. I believe that the reality of the global marketplace will force change on the U.S. print market at an even faster rate. Short term, American-based printers cannot compete with the Pacific Rim on price. Some might argue quality and availability remain issues, but foreign providers are becoming more competitive than many U.S. printers realize.

So, to compete, print must differentiate from the commoditization of its product by driving the value of what it produces and provides farther upstream in the strategic and creative process. That is the challenge—to think about print differently, about who you are selling to, and what you are selling and manufacturing.

The best success stories I hear about are the marriage of printers and customers who have worked together to streamline a process that increases the value of print. It very rarely has anything to do with the fidelity of a dot, or the cost per square inch of a job. It’s usually an innovative idea about how to reposition the execution of print, increasing the awareness of where the print can be used more effectively, or how the value of a printed project can be enhanced through distribution, asset management or the repurposing of content.

It’s a big change for our industry, but one that is imperative for its next stage of evolution. PI