Q&A With John Hamm on the Digital Printing Outlook

One on One With John Hamm

A 35-year veteran in the graphic communications industry, John Hamm has exten-sive applied experience on both sides of the fence. Following nine years in sales and management at Xerox, he enjoyed a fruitful 20-year career in commercial print-ing, growing and presiding over an industry-leading firm in the DC area (Balmar Inc.). In 1999, Hamm rejoined Xerox to lead its Worldwide marketing efforts and create market demand for a new breed of innovative commercial printing technology. Most recently, he launched his own business and market develop-ment consulting firm, John M. Hamm & Associates, LLC, based in Annapolis, Maryland. Our interview took place in mid-June.

– Doug Sprei

You recently were commissioned to co-produce (with Boston-based State Street Consultants) a major new market research study for PRIMIR, entitled The Digital Printing Outlook in a Production Environment. How’s it going, and who are some of the companies you’re interviewing?

I have been interviewing a variety of companies from throughout the U.S. and Canada, and am thoroughly enjoying the project. Surveying more than 500 firms throughout North America, State Street is performing the quantitative analysis, while I am conducting in-depth interviews with 25 firms. We’ve targeted a wide cross-section of firms by geography, market segments, size, and the niches that they serve –such as those who are producing only digital printing, commercial printers who have added digital to complement their offset services, book printers, web-enabled digital print, direct mail, and more. And we’re also talking with many of the major suppliers in the digital print space.

Are you looking toward vertical markets and demand for digital printing there; as for instance how one-to-one marketing might play out in a healthcare or real estate environment?

Yes. As an example at the moment, I am inter-viewing a large financial services enterprise that is using personalized, digital printing to achieve measurable business results with their documents.

What’s your access route into learning about how print communication produces improved business results in such markets?

It’s through identifying document applications that these enterprise companies are producing in support of their go-to-market strategies. Among the most successful opportunities are multimedia programs that create numerous touch points with the ultimate customer and drive them toward buying decisions. Such cross-media programs may include the combination of print with personalized web sites (PURL’s), e-mail follow up, and personal selling.

Any compelling findings in the early going?

We’re looking at companies with very interesting sets of services. A good example is one I visited in Cleveland. They had operated as an offset lithographer since being founded by a great-grandfather, nearly 100 years ago. Today, they offer an integrated set of graphic communica-tions services through three separately branded business units. One is their direct marketing arm, fulfillment center and mail operation; another is their commercial print operation; and the third is a database marketing service unit that provides e-storefront, web-to-print access and digital asset manage-ment services.

Through this third business unit, customers can access their intellectual property assets such as images, documents, video, and more; and order the printing and distribution of documents, while maintaining control and brand integrity. This service provides customers with a secure DAM repository that they can access worldwide via the Internet.

This former printing company, now re-engineered as a solutions company is differentiated, global and growing through providing ancillary value-added services to their customers in various targeted industry markets.

That’s a nice example of going after new opportunities without leaving your base, picking up ancillary revenue streams.

Yes, and I think it’s also a great story about branding – giving identity to valuable, complementary service offer-ings instead of positioning oneself as a printing company that also offers such services. We did that when I was the president of Balmar, successfully brand-ing our graphic design studio that was housed in one of our printing plants.

What was the advantage of doing that? Is it because you already had an embedded identity as a printing company?

When my sales associates visited marketing directors in prospective client companies, they were able to represent our design services value proposition as the integration of design with the printing process. That type of brand identity and positioning opened up many new markets and revenue opportunities.

So then when it comes to approaching chief marketing executives, what are you learning about the nature of the pitch?

I visited a large direct mail operation in Pittsburgh that is providing digital print-ing and mailing of 400 million pieces annually. There are others that are larger in that segment, but one competitive advantage this company has created is their teaming approach with designers and agencies. Rather than presenting them-selves as simply a mail house, they are a personalized marketing communications company, offering an integrated set of offerings. And that’s enabled them to secure important, major corporate and non-profit clients that their competitors would like to have.

Do they go into the chief marketing officer’s office with a story about return on investment?

Yes, they are not talking about price per piece; they are talking about R.O.I., sales-per-piece, or donations-per-piece. And they present metrics and case studies as proof of benefit for personalized and cross-media communications.

Our cover story for this issue focuses on collaboration in the supplier/vendor community. When I went to On Demand I was struck by how many vendors – including many NPES members – are teaming up. Big and small players are collaborating in ways we haven’t seen before.

I would say that’s true. Just look at any of the digital press suppliers, such as HP, Kodak or Xerox, and their partnering relationships. For example, one of Xerox’s strongest partners is Adobe, and there are many other similar examples. For our PRIMIR study, I have interviewed a Minneapolis printing company who has posted a partners page on their web site, and their top partner listed is Adobe. I thought it interesting that they had not named Heidelberg, Xerox, or others that one might expect. When I asked their president why, he answered, “With a postscript workflow, Adobe is one of our most important partners. That’s how we get our work – through the success of Adobe’s solutions and working with our customers in a PDF environment.”

You mentioned Heidelberg. When I worked at their Digital Division in Rochester several years ago, Xerox was their adversary across the river. Now Heidelberg and Xerox are collaborating.

That’s right, now they are partners, and their Prinect and Freeflow workflow solutions offer interoperability. . .

So that their respective offset and digital devices can interact seamlessly?

In today’s printing environment, work-flow is increasingly instrumental in creating manufacturing efficiencies. People like to say that digital printing complements offset; that’s particularly true when printers integrate these technologies, creating an environment where their various press technologies operate as alternative output devices on a common workflow platform. For example, if your pre-press workflow is Brisk, or Prinergy, or Prinect, and you integrate your workflow software with your digital press workflow, then any of these digital presses, sheet fed presses, web presses and other machines are available for print production through your single workflow.

Going back to the digital printing study you’re doing for PRIMIR…any interesting anecdotes in the early going?

I was interviewing a Canadian printer, and asked him why he thought market adoption for personalized printing had taken so long. After telling me that he didn’t see it as such a big deal; it’s been around for a long time, and he’s not interested in personalized catalogs that had been created from database decisions concerning his personal preferences, he added, “Print will be around for a long time, because there’s no faster random access tool in existence than the human mind.” That’s an interest-ing perspective, wouldn’t you say?