Quick Printing

Okay, we’re all adults here so we should be able to handle the truth. The truth is that if you get an email saying you’ve won the German Postal Lottery or that somebody in Africa wants to give you millions of dollars, you’d be smart enough to immediately recognize it as a scam. However, I’ve heard about some printers lately who have nearly fallen for an equally unlikely pitch just because it has been posed as a request for proposal — in other words, new business that has come knocking without any effort. Free money.

Yes, I know. In this Internet age, business in no longer restricted to geographic areas. If you have a Web presence, you are open to the whole wide world. But ask yourself, why would a missionary in Ghana or a social worker in Nigeria pick your particular Kansas or Idaho or Mississippi print shop out of the 2,720,000 printing companies that pop up when one Google’s “printing companies.” Is your website that good?

I don’t know of any printer who has actually bitten hook, line, and sinker and lost money on a printing-specific scam, but I bet you there have been some. And for anybody who thinks printers might be an unlikely target for Internet scammers, Google comes up with 1,380,000 hits for “printing scams.”

Now, pardon me while I send my banking information to that nice widow in Rwanda who wants me to launder the $3,576.898 (U.S.) her former husband embezzled from the finance ministry. What could go wrong?

Recently, there was an article this week on ComputerWorld.com titled “Have your avatar call my avatar: Doing business virtually.” It led off with a report on a Xerox meeting and product rollout that was held simultaneously at Boston’s Fenway Park and at Xerox Inspiration Island in Second Life. (One Xerox exec supposedly made a rather spectacular crash landing there in her virtual personal jetpack.) The object of this event was to both showcase the new product and to test out Second Life as a vehicle for meetings.

While noting that the melding of the virtual world with the real world is still in its infancy, the author says: “Be warned. Many think it’s just a matter of time before being ‘in-world’ becomes as important for business as having a Web site and standard teleconferencing is.”

Be still, my foolish heart. It seems to me we already have enough ways to avoid actual contact with other human beings. Emails, and chat rooms, and FaceBook, oh my! Let’s see how many days we can go without having to actually interact in person. Even without Second Life, I know cubicled office workers who seldom interact face-to-face with each other unless somebody calls a meeting or they can’t avoid each other at the coffee pot. (I don’t consider the prairie dog pop-up a real face-to-face encounter.)

Maybe avatar-to-avatar contact is the future of business communications, but I won’t go down that road without kicking and screaming—at least until they figure out how to provide real cold beer in their virtual worlds.

* One of the concerns about inkjet production printing is the durability of the printing heads. Maybe that’s why every vendor of said equipment was certain to mention their machine’s robust heads. For some reason that made me think of sturdy plumbing in a Navy bathroom.

* You can’t really say some vendors were green-washing their offerings, but some did go out of their way to slap a green tag on everything but the kitchen sink. Our industry is based on putting marks on paper, so the real green is energy efficiency, sustainability, and recycling. The latter might put inkjet at a disadvantage since some substrates can’t be recycled and inkjet ink is more difficult to deal with than other inks—at least for now.

* In the attempt to attract the attention of attendees, some vendors blasted loud music and broadcast loud demos. Couple that with the noise of the various machines, and in some halls, talking to someone was like trying to hold a conversation during a Led Zeppelin concert.

* The biggest non-news news item came on the first day of the show when the front page headline of the show daily breathlessly announced that MAN Roland had changed its name to manroland. I was so overcome with emotion that I went to the beer tent to recover.

* I have to wonder how many pounds of printed materials wound up being left behind in hotel rooms by departing trade journalists. Sure, we work in an industry that prints stuff, but those memory sticks certainly are more convenient for travel than any nice, embossed, pocket folder full of press releases.

There is absolutely no question that personalized marketing is here to stay. The technology that puts VDP within reach has the potential to revolutionize the printing industry. So before you read this, please understand that I’m not calling the industry’s new baby ugly. VDP is only one small, and comparatively benign, part of a much larger trend.

That said, listening to the On Demand keynote by David Pogue, the personal technology columnist for the New York Times, gave me a bit of a chill. Pogue focused on the benefits of personalized marketing. He said that soon we’ll be able to receive an online newspaper that is totally customized to our interests. It will have feature articles about subjects that interest us and ads for products that we’ve indicated a preference for somewhere along the line. He has a musical background and also talked about the growing popularity of downloading, which is now the preferred method for acquiring music. We no longer have to buy the whole CD; we can just download the songs we like.

That sounds pretty cool on the surface, and there is certainly a place for such services, but there is also a real danger in this move toward narrowing our focus so completely. Think of the missed opportunities.

Using music as an example, did you ever buy an album or CD back in the “old days” and fall in love with a track that was buried somewhere in the middle? A song that never got a moment’s notice on radio, but that spoke to you in a very personal way? It was even more special because you discovered it on your own.

You’ve probably picked up a magazine or newspaper, maybe even a copy of Quick Printing, and read an article or seen an ad that piqued your interest. Maybe it led you to pursue a new avenue of business, study, or recreation that you wouldn’t have sought out on your own. Maybe it helped you see the other side of an issue, or amused you, or just made you stop and think. If we limit ourselves only to what we already know, we deprive ourselves of new ideas that can inspire us and broaden our horizons—that help us grow.

Extreme personalization, in essence, narrows our world view, our scope of thought, and our opportunities. Who would you be today if you had chosen only to continue reading and experiencing the things you enjoyed as a teenager or college student? In a world that seems to become a little more polarized with each passing day, total personalization becomes another tool of separation. This technology has the power to limit not only who we are today, but also our potential for tomorrow. And the genie is already out of the bottle.

An outfit called Vertis Communications is touting its “Decade of Data,” which is supposed to be a tool marketers can use “for integrating trusted print media into their multi-channel marketing campaigns.” Naturally, I’m all for that.

The mention of multi-channel marketing reminded me of an after-hours trade show event last year in which a major vendor of digital printing equipment was touting the virtual experience of Second Life. I couldn’t quite figure out why a print vendor would be doing such a thing but that’s their business.

As I understand it, Second Life gives participants the chance to construct a new reality in which to hang out. Meeting avatar-to-avatar instead of face-to-face probably is more sanitary but not as much fun – unless the process involves that “Feelie-Vision”, which was featured in 1950s Sci-Fi story I recall.

I hadn’t given Second Life much thought since the event until I ran across the website http://www.getafirstlife.com/. It touts First Life as “a 3D analog world where server lag does not exist” and advises members to “Go outside! Membership is free! Find out where you actually live!” Under an FAQ section the site poses these deep questions: “Are five senses enough? Why can’t I build a dirigible with my mind? Penguins, spoons and you – what’s life like among the flightless?” There’s also a Teen First Life where young people can “Hang out at the mall! Embarrass yourself in gym class! Get acne!”

Considering that the Vertis data shows that young adults are spending three times as much time in front of computers than they did 10 years ago, maybe we should invite them to join First Life. We could send a printed invitation.

IN THE NOVEMBER Quick Printing Update I mentioned the results of the 2007 Print Design Survey sponsored by MAN Roland. In brief, 92% of designers work in print and spend 70% of their time doing so. Print buying is growing for 23% and staying steady for 64%. Oh, and 88% do the print buying themselves.

Now for the bad news – price remains the number one consideration in selecting a printer – followed by quality and service. Trust comes next followed by digital short-run capabilities and then environmentally friendly practices. To me the fact that price is by far the number one consideration for print buyers means that many printers are failing to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

If that sounds a little harsh, I point to a recent mini-survey by printbuyersonline.com that asked the following: “Please rate how effective you believe that print suppliers are at communicating meaningful differentiation from their competitors.” The results (evidently rounded off to the nearest percentage point) even surprised an old cynic like me.

• Excellent – 1%
• Very Good – 9%
• Good – 14%
• Fair – 54%
• Poor – 21%

That means that less than a quarter of printers are perceived as doing an adequate job of differentiating themselves from the competition – just a bit more than are perceived as doing a poor job. The results might even be more disturbing if, as I suspect, those giving their printers a “fair” rating were just being polite.

Well, 50,000 air miles later the 2007 high travel season has come to a close. Trade shows, franchise conferences, association events, vendor briefings, etc. have mostly come and gone. That is a good thing because now my weekends can be used for the really important stuff — like football games. Herwith a couple of general observations.

1. The industry seems to be of good cheer and optimistic about the near future. Owners who have figured out that they are business people rather than printers are doing the best.
2. Green is the color of the year, but as Kermit noted: “It ain’t easy being green.”Printers and vendors are just now trying to figure out how and how far they need to go to meet the slowly growing customer demand for environmentally responsible products and services.
3. Hardware vendors finally have (for the most part) figured out that they need to help buyers of their boxes make money or they won’t be around to buy more boxes.
4. Believe it or not, the Internet is here to stay. Some printers have figured out how to use it to make more money — many have not.
5. Flying sucks but is essential unless you are of Frank Romano’s stature and status and have the time for transcontinental trains or trans-Atlantic ships. For us doomed to air travel, remember the clear plastic one-quart zip-top baggie and American Express — don’t leave home without them.

Ah, what’s life without an adventure? Adobe puts a FedEx Kinko’s click-through button on the newest versions of Acrobat and Reader and the printing world goes bozo. Millions of Adobe users now have a straight shot to Kinko’s. Unfair competition? Well, maybe – if you are a printer who considers Kinko’s to be a major competitor. Maybe not if you routinely send nickel-and-dime, pain-in-the-neck customers to Kinko’s to get them out of your hair.

The real issue here is Adobe’s short-sightedness. The company should have realized that this would cause an outcry from an industry it has constantly courted. Its Adobe Solutions Network program has been a good marketing tool for printers over the years and gives them $2,400 in software and support for $595. So why didn’t the company take that relationship into account? My take is that this was a case of internal miscommunication at Adobe. A few printers see more sinister things afoot, but I can’t buy that.

My advice? See what comes out of the “summit meeting” at Adobe where printers and association folks will try to work out a way to deal with the situation and then get over it and go out and sell something to somebody.

Some companies are better at resolving customer complaints than others. I once sent a letter to Stouffer’s complaining about the quality of one of their frozen entrees. They sent me back a letter saying they were sorry I wasn’t happy. It included coupons for more of the exact same frozen entrée I was complaining about.

On another occasion, Karen and I were offended and annoyed by the volume and content of the music being played at the local outlet of a national sandwich chain. We contacted the chain headquarters and asked if this sort of music met company policy. They said that it did not and that the local store would be contacted. They also sent some free sandwich coupons, which we used a week or so later – to an entirely different and much more pleasing background music selection.

Yesterday I ran across a very strange little news item which I figure might have involved a reaction to unresolved customer complaints. In the town of West Point, MS, a man was fined $279 for throwing a pig over the counter of a Holiday Inn Express. Critter tossing to protest poor service must be a local phenomenon because there were three other incidents at local businesses and fast food establishments – one involving another pig and two involving possums.

We all have had disgruntled customers at one time or another, but I have yet to hear of a printer who has had a pig or a possum flung across the front counter.

Not that long ago, trendy and hip business practices were based on Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Victory should be the objective and harsh discipline the norm. The latest BusinessWeek magazine outlines some basic principles from Sun Tzu: Greed is good. Be tough. Attack only when victory is likely. Beat the enemy. Winning is essential and requires clever tactics and, sometimes, deception.

Ah, but that may be changing. According to the BusinessWeek article, the latest business fad is based on the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu text based on the wisdom of Lord Krishna. Here it is important to focus on your thoughts and actions rather than the outcome. Greed is bad. Be fair. Act rather than react. Seek higher consciousness and be sensitive to shareholders, partners, employees, and neighbors. Feel the Karma, y’all?

Frankly, I find the latter approach more to my liking, perhaps because I got a belly full of the former while in the Army. In any case, I find it amusing to see these business fads come and go while some simple truths remain constant - not the least of which comes from Johnny Carson’s old sidekick Ed McMahon: “Honesty is the single most important factor having a direct bearing on the final success of an individual, corporation, or product.”

All this philosophical stuff makes me thirsty and my Karma says I should go get a cold beer.