Business Management - Marketing/Sales

FOR DECADES, the printing industry’s “Terms and Conditions for Sale” was a keystone in helping printing companies and their customers work together. Created by the major printer associations, the “Terms and Conditions for Sale” document sought to establish acceptable standards of doing business between printers and their customers. This document was created to establish “rules” to minimize the number of conflicts between printers and their customers, and diminish a printer’s financial liability when a job went awry. These standards were set up by parties that represent printers so, understandably, those terms and conditions were fashioned to primarily protect printers. Over the past several

DOES ANYBODY really, really, ever, ever listen when a recorded message tells you, “This call may be monitored for quality?”

I don’t think so. I don’t believe there are any monitors. Monitors are a fictitious form of marketing communication. The company is just telling us, “We care about quality, and so we are monitoring this call!”

Or, maybe I’ve got it wrong. Maybe they are monitoring my quality. Like maybe they are checking on the quality of my baritone, my diction or my rationale for the call.

Why else would they give me a warning that the call was being monitored?

I’ve been through some tortuous

Friesens Corporation, Lawton Printing, and Corporate Press Join Organization’s Growing Membership WASHINGTON, DC—March 22, 2007—The Print Council, a national business development initiative dedicated to promoting the greater use of printing and print media, today announced that Lawton Printing, The Friesens Corporation and Corporate Press have joined the organization’s growing membership. As new members of the Council, these well-regarded printers will be working with other companies to increase demand for printed materials. Members of The Print Council include commercial printers, paper manufacturers, press, ink and equipment manufacturers, publishers, industry associations, ad agencies, and public relations firms. Through advertising and speaking engagements, The Print Council is

RESTON, VA—March 12, 2007—A new Print Industries Market Information and Research Organization (PRIMIR) study, Magazine Printing and Publishing 2006-2011 provides an understanding of the trends, market influences and competition that will shape the magazine printing industry to 2011 and beyond. The report includes both qualitative and quantitative analysis and statistics about the magazine industry. Conducted by PrintCom Consulting Group, Waxhaw, NC, for PRIMIR, the research study is based on extensive analysis of industry databases containing detailed information about magazine companies and individual magazine titles. Additionally, real world insights were drawn from nearly 100 in-depth expert interviews in conjunction with a physical sampling and

For those companies that are best prepared, significant growth opportunities remain; those unprepared will be left behind, Paparozzi cautioned. SANTA BARBARA, CA—MARCH 8, 2007—At a special “State of the Industry” presentation that opened the program portion of NAPL’s Top Management Conference 2007 on Thursday morning, March 8, NAPL Vice President and Chief Economist Andrew Paparozzi told the record crowd of more than 250 attendees that the printing industry “is in expansion. Our sales grew at their fastest rate in eight years in 2006 and will continue to grow, although at a noticeably slower pace. Volume has finally regained pre-recession levels. And we’ve even regained some

NEW YORK CITY—March 2, 2007—The Black Book, the premiere resource in commercial photography for over 70,000 global Art Directors, Designers, Creative Directors, Editors and Publishers, is proud to announce its collaboration with founding partners Pictorial Offset Corporation, and Neenah Paper, to launch the “CSR Guide” in its 2007 AR100 Award Show book. As an addition to the already popular AR100 Award Show book, the CSR Guide will be added to the existing printed publication, which celebrates the overall design in Annual Reports. The CSR Guide will premiere as a competition of the design and content matter of Corporate Sustainability Reports, where corporations, designers,

FORGET ABOUT the quality from your digital output device. Don’t stress over maximum rated print speeds. As the digital printing juggernaut continues to take hold, those embracing the technology face more pressing concerns. Industry wisdom proclaims that the successful companies are those able to morph from being printing operations into marketing or communications businesses that, by the way, also happen to provide printing. It’s an oft-repeated message evangelized by speakers at almost any conference or seminar focused on digital and variable data printing. But what does it really entail? Re-engineering your printing business requires different skill sets. Equipment, and even service, capabilities are secondary

IN JANUARY, I had the opportunity to attend the first annual conference for the new XMPie Users Group. It had an amazing attendance of 160 people from 90 companies, plus XMPie and sponsor attendees. This great turnout is a reflection of the coming of age of variable data printing, and attendees were anxious to learn more about how they could leverage this technology to differentiate and grow their businesses. The conference had both marketing and technical tracks, with about 60 percent of attendees choosing to focus on the technical side. An interesting trend came out of the general sessions and marketing track that I wanted

IT’S HARD not to be skeptical about the movement toward acting in an environmentally responsible way. Isn’t sustainability just a redux of the push to use recycled paper that fell far short of the goal? What about those stories of recyclables still ending up in landfills, now just in pretty blue bags? Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” documentary may have garnered an Academy Award nomination, but it’s likely just speaking to the converted…and how many of them still drove an SUV to see the movie or rent the DVD? How can anyone be sure that electricity really is being generated by wind power, and

AS PRINT providers look to transform their businesses from primarily print-based to a broader range of marketing services, the Internet is becoming an increasingly important part of their business model. For some, that means adding Web design as part of their creative and design offerings. For others, it means adding Web-to-print, whether for ordering static documents or for allowing customers to customize—even personalize—documents based on templates. But while Web-to-print, as an umbrella category, has been getting a lot of attention, another Internet-driven application is rapidly gaining momentum—the ability to use cross-media technology to create personalized URLs (or PURLs), which send recipients of print