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High Touch, emotive, B 2 C* communiques
High Touch, emotive, B 2 C* communiques *B2C: as in your Business (in whatever biz it may be) to your Client. On January 2, 2010 we posted an article under the Gallery section of this website titled "All PR is Good PR, G-G-G Very Good!" and buried in that article was this: >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>snippet>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> A couple of years ago, Dan Lane, IAPHC member, owner of Tabs To Go and Gallery guru of the Seattle Washington SMSA, sent us an article about the Public Relations value of awards, written by marketing savvy Nancy S. Juetten: http://www.nsjmktg.com/pdfs/award-wins-can-help-build.pdf Nancy wrote about the connective tissue PR efforts can bring to any firm, and in her case, her own firm in a November 2007 post on her website called: Article on Award Wins Delivers Speaking Engagement and More <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<snippet<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< Exactly one day later, on 3 January 2010, we had an e-mail from Nancy, thanking us for mentioning her in our Blog. Now that's interesting, how exactly did she know we had posted about her? Probably due to that fun little Blogging protocol called trackback -- if you aren't familiar, here is a one sentence primer from Wikipedia: "A trackback is one of three types of linkbacks, methods for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking, and so referring, to their articles." We have also written several times of late about the Google application called Google Alerts that will alert you when your company, (or perhaps your most adept competitor,) is written about somewhere in the interstices of the internet. Uh, it's a free app pilgrim and doncha kind of want to know who's zooming you? The advent of social media is a game changer in high touch communications with one's clients. All is changed, changed utterly, as Yeats foretold. And our Mission today is, unsurprisingly, in utter tandem with the EPIC mandate of the IAPHC, The Graphic Professionals Resource Network to Educate/Promote/Inform/Connect (EPIC) all our members with the global graphic community. Educate -- Alrighty then, and already you, dear and gentle reader, should be thinking: 'OK self, we need to make sure our Blog is using the trackback opportunity to spread the word, and we need to use Google Alerts to track our erstwhile competitor, Furbush's House of Printing and Penury.' All of which is prelude to today's peachy Keane prolix parableness. Promote -- OK, this is the fun stuff. A couple of weeks ago, we became fans of the Facebook page of Scarab Printing Arts in the St Louis, Missouri market area. On Saturday 1 May 2010, we had this note from Greg Greenwald, president of Scarab: Facebook | Scarab Printing Arts And really, is there any better marketing approach than asking clients what you can do better? Two caveats: Firstly, we have seen Facebook pages for some printing companies with the (in)famous appellation -- "Crimea Comic Book Printery only shares some information." Huh? Do you only have an interest in some few (very few) customers? And secondly, we have also seen Facebook pages for printing companies who have 1,948 friends and counting except that all of them are 19 years old or younger, hmmmm, I wonder who the Facebook Group administrator is??? And sure enough that callow young man known as Propeller Pete in Prepress, has managed to garner all his angry young buddies as Friends of your company because you put him in charge of the project. Good intentions sometimes go awry! Inform -- It would seem a no brainer that all printers great and small would produce a printed newsletter to share with their clients as it is a glorious opportunity to show your clients an exact sample of the very type of thing you propose to do for them, i.e., print on paper. As an example, we salute Amanda Bledsoe whose marketing portfolio means she is editor of the Publishers Press (Shepherdsville, Kentucky) printed newsletter PressCheck which always has at least one factoid or knowledge nugget we were not aware of previously. Publishers Press has also created a sister firm to leverage digital versions of printed magazines: http://www.epubxpress.com/ And we have written before about some of our connections who produce mighty fine newsletters of the e-mailable variety too. If you haven't checked it out we commend IAPHC-Seattle member Milt Vine who has produced some 259 issues which are never failing in being informative and thought provoking. You can find out more at Seattle Bindery. We have been lucky enough to be on Lisa Bickford's e-mail list for her Highlight Printing (located in balmy Minneapolis) for the past year or so and are impressed by her renewed zeal to add useful, actionable info in both the e-news and also on the firms amped up website. By the by, we took the time (just a minute to do) to pat Milt Vine and Lisa Bickford on the back for their efforts. Milt said: "From you, that is much appreciated. Thanks." And Lisa replied: "Thank you for noticing and letting me know you noticed. I really enjoy doing them both, so it is very gratifying to get feedback. Even constructive criticism is appreciated – I want to keep on improving it." Hey, when is the last time you told a client you were impressed by something they have been doing? If you are a member of the IAPHC LinkedIn Group (and why in the world would you not be?) then you know that we have regularly re-posted e-news letters from Twill Printing in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey and Foster Printing in Michigan City, Indiana for review by members of the Group. We like the Twill newsletter because it includes photos of IAPHC member George Twill and his brother Peter and their key managers in front of past Gallery awards won by the firm (- it's called promotion pilgrim!); and we like the Foster Printing effort (where Gene Toepfer, Director of Sales has re-connected as an IAPHC member) because of the super easy to use links that allow anyone to repost the newsletter to Facebook, or LinkedIn and more. CONNECT -- Consider this observation made 4 May 2010 to Bill Lamparter of PrintCom Consulting Group and Mike Stevens and some IAPHC Board members: "The Internet may indeed be a disruptive innovation for the hidebound graphic arts industry, but it is also a transformational springboard for creating networks and value chains far better than anything we have known before." So, let's suppose a reader of this august assemblage of artfully actionable to-do lists says, 'Self, he's right, the Bald Bozo, aka the Loopy Lawyer Leprechaun is right, we need to do more b2c communiques with our clients. But whither to start?' Well it turns out that help is not merely on the way, it already exists. We belong to several LinkedIn Groups. On one, the QR Codes Group, we spotted some spot-on musings on marketing from a fellow named Patrick Whelan who at that moment was not yet a part of our network. So we reached out, found out that Pat runs Great Reach Inc. and is in fact the fellow who assists Twill Printing and Foster Printing (and many more) with their aforementioned e-newsletters. And Pat is now a part of our network and we are happy to provide a connection to his fine work. And that got us rummaging in old networks too, whatever happened to that marvelous Ink Incredible direct mail service run by Mike Stevens and his vivacious bride Jenny in Fargo, North Dakota? Well, we asked Google to help and in a few clicks we found Mike and are very excited to also recommend that all printers great or small take a moment to check out Mike and Jenny's expanding array of offerings. Mike wrote to us on 3 May 2010: "Best way to contact us is to visit www.MarketingIdeasForPrinters.com or by calling 1-800-736-0688. We will soon be launching a low cost social marketing 'content' package that I'm hoping will generate some 'new' prospects and connections at a very low cost, since cash is tight for so many." Since we don't know a finer man than Mike Stevens, we also encourage you to check it out! Similarly, there is an outfit in Lincoln, Nebraska called Printer Presence which also provides assistance in direct mail marketing, website design and more. It would be our hope that readers of this Blog post are thinking, 'boy we really need to jump into this social networking marketing stew.' HERE is a news release from IAPHC-Rochester member Chris Pape's firm Monroe Litho in Rochester, New York that shows you must indeed become involved. Hopefully you clicked the Monroe Litho link and are intrigued to see how they are partnering with Kodak and Twitter and IPEX too. The Kodak ONE magazine is a great example of how a printed newsletter or magazine can help support larger marketing objectives. As soon as we read about it, we subscribed. An issue a year or so ago that featured the Kodak Dimensional Ink for the NexPress used the cover to give a tactile sense of how the ink worked to create a sense of sensual dimension. The September 2009 issue available in the Kodak booth at Print 09 was similarly brilliant in execution; the cover shows off the Kodak Flexcel NX Digital Flexographic System in a very memorable way. And in fact, ONE magazine lead directly to Kodak participating in the International Gallery as an entrant for the first time in 2009. Which should drive home the ultimate point of this Blog post -- social media and print can interact in a very beneficial partnership. Cheers, Kevin Keane
Sustainability: This Hook won't sink you!
Sustainability: This Hook won't sink you!
In early December, 2009, IAPHC member Fred Golden, who heads up sales for Mark Lithography/Key Printing in Cedar Knolls, NJ wrote to thank us for a link to a paper company (NewPage) website that helped Fred in dealing with the objections of an agency client who said its customers wanted to use e-mails or CD's instead of printed Benefit Planners. See Kevin Keane Blog for 6 December 2009 titled "EPIC : Curious; the movable feast" :
We have been accumulating an array of similar actionable tools which any designer/printer/finisher or any vendor of paper/consummables/capital equipment in the global graphic arts may want to keep on speed dial recall on their iPhone.
And what got us really cogitating was a quote from our longtime pal Bruce Kenworthy.
Bruce Kenworthy volunteered at this year's WorldSkills competition in Calgary. (Print Action Photo by Brian Ellis)
Speaking to the IAPHC Chapter (aGAIN-Calgary) in Calgary last September, Bruce said: “Printing is going to be around for a long time,” said Kenworthy. “It’s sustainable, it’s renewable and we’re damn lucky to do what we do.”
Bruce is one of those guys for whom the expressions "joie de vivre" and "lives life with gusto" were coined. He looks after the Calgary, Alberta operations of Rhino Print Solutions, an award winning printer based in Richmond, British Columbia. The quote comes from an October 2009 article in Print Action magazine's online edition:
Canadian Printing in Good Hands | News
Bruce's observation about sustainability/renewability reminded us of a string of print attributes shared by Yves Rogivue when he was president of manroland in North America, earlier this decade. A short Google search turned up what we remembered:
"Print continues to display the classic strengths that have made it
a powerful communicator over the ages: permanence, tangibility, sensuality, physicality, convenience, portability."
That quote comes from a June 2006 report that is well worth reviewing in the context of the vortex of the past few years:
Our sense is that anyone who wishes to be a survivor and thence a thriver in the graphic arts needs to be a participant in the process as we collaboratively seek to articulate the argument that while print is no longer an automatic media buy, it is still an important, effective, valuable, and sustainable partner in the media mixology.
Fortunately this is becoming a truly global effort.
Our long ago e-mail correspondent, Joe Kowalewski of the Printing Industries Association of Australia, weighed in with his take from down under in the Print21 magazine issue of August 2009. You can read the full article, titled "print and paper .. the fightback starts here" by clicking HERE.
As we have written about previously, there are two distinct efforts under way in Europe. One is called Print Power which is based in Brussels, Belgium.
Here is an early video effort from the folks at Print Power:
Print Power from Print Power on Vimeo.
Meanwhile, the other campaign, which is called Two Sides is hard at work assisting anyone interested in helping with the framework as we seek to clearly articulate the argument that print still matters. We encourage all our readers to check back regularly with the Print Power and Two Sides websites for the latest news and success stories.
To be clear, we thought for a long time that the attributes of permanence and portability were trump cards for print.
Frequent KevBlognoscenti may recall our delight in this quote from Dr. Derrick de Kerckhove of the University of Toronto which was found in the Domtar annual report for 2008:
"If electronic information is that of 'real time', printed information is that of long time. At the US Library of Congress, we will find that their best electronic recording device cannot guarantee electronic archives for more than 110 years. After that they begin to degrade."
However, in this era of digital disposability, and with ever more portable Kindle's and iPads (and their e-reader progeny yet to hatch,) perhaps we missed the marketing hooks that really have legs in this increasingly green century -- Bruce Kenworthy nailed the best hooks when he spoke of: sustainable and renewable.
So now we urge you gentle reader, to absorb this masterful and well researched paper written for the PBS Media Shift blog by Don Carli and published on 31 March, 2010. Take the time to download it (it is also posted to the Two Sides website) and to read and re-read it. As Fred Golden knows, clients need actionable information to combat the notion that print is inherently anti-environmental.
These ideas are showing up in all kinds of campaigns now. Finch Paper and Grycksbo Paper, and New Leaf Paper and and Neenah Paper and Mohawk Paper and Domtar Paper (and many more) are all engaged in what Joe Kowalewski called "the fightback."
We were reading Print21 Online (the online journal for the graphic arts in Australia and New Zealand) and ran across a new effort in New Zealand that has just kicked off ---
And here is a 26 April 2010 article in Toronto's Globe and Mail:
There are some undeniable truths in the global graphic arts today. There has been an accelerating media shift away from print, and there is less conventional printing being done today. Shorter run lengths, jobs that move, (thanks to ever increasing automation) thru the print plant with less and less human touch or intervention. Insane turnaround times. Quality parameters, (i.e., what really matters to the client,) that are spelled "good enough." A digital printing business model that is quite different from the old model and so on. And one would be an idjit of remarkable foolishness to think that things will get back to normal. The new normal is change on top of change.
But it is also true that billions of dollars will be spent on print this year, and the clever print purveyor will seek to inform clients of ways in which print can be a beneficial arrow in the marketing quiver and one that is sustainable and renewable to boot.
Our friend Mario Assadi is president of Greener Printer in Berkeley, California. In early April, we saw that his firm had achieved SGP Certification and include a link to the news release about what this means HERE.
And so, whether one finds your best arguments from The Print Council, or RIT's Print in the Mix, or in the boreal rain forests of British Columbia, or in Brussels or London or Melbourne, it is incumbent on all of us to be a participant in the process of articulating the argument that print can still be cool, and real green too.
We thought Xerox did a good job of reminding folks who marked the recent Earth Day of its efforts to assist:
And in these Confucian and confounding times, little bit of left of center Nordic humour doesn't hurt:
The IAPHC exists to Educate/Promote/Inform/Connect (EPIC) all our members with the global graphic community. If you would like to join our EPIC Mission-Mandate, please see the Contact Us button on our website at www.iaphc.org
Bitten by the Apple; Perils of Publishers
Bitten by the Apple; Perils of Publishers
As longtime readers know, we have subscribed to the printed edition of The New Yorker magazine for decades now, and relish the opportunity, once a week, to sit awhile and learn by reading closely. Parsing the meanings of in-depth reportage.
This article link by the excellent reporter Ken Auletta in the 26 April 2010 edition of The New Yorker is one of those articles a person wants to clip and save and highlight and re-consider again a day or two later. It should be required reading for anyone in the global graphic arts industry. As of 24 April it is the most popular article from this week's edition and is also number one in the "Most e-mailed" standings.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/04/26/100426fa_fact_auletta
Upon reading it on Saturday 24 April 2010, we immediately posted it to our Facebook Page, our IAPHC LinkedIn Group and the Print Industry Thought Leaders Group on LinkedIn. And we will post this bit of bloggery to our LinkedIn page as well.
And as visitors to this site know, we have been quite intrigued by the ramifications of a little 46 second You Tube video titled "Alice for the iPad" and re-post the embedded link to that amazing video here, and ask you to read Mr. Auletta's article in the context of this video:
We have a virtual friend named Maurice Kwan who is with Regal Printing Limited in Aberdeen, Hong Kong. Maurice is an IAPHC Global member and his firm sends amazingly high quality entries to each successive International Gallery. We are friends with him thanks to the amazing global reach of Facebook, an innovation that seemed highly implausible just 6 years ago, (Facebook launched in February 2004) and is inexorably drawing in hordes of middle aged folks who love to share. Probably exactly the demographic the collegians who dreamed up Facebook intended or expected. NOT!
So, think about the Apple iPad and the Auletta article and the Alice video above and consider the implications for how the iPad (and it's progeny) will change the graphic communications industry in ways unintended and unexpected.
Someday, we may be honoured to meet Maurice Kwan face to face, but for now, we share his Facebook observation on the ramifications of Alice in the tumbling wonderland of the iPad. He posted this comment on April 15th after we sent him the You Tube link. Remember, the Alice for the iPad video was initially posted on YouTube on 13 April 2010 and as of Saturday 24 April it has been viewed 969,914 times. Does that qualify for viral intrigue?
Maurice Kwan the pop-up book will soon be obseleted, please click to see the "Alice for the iPad" and be amazed with what a e-book can tell story like a movie.
So you tell me how much longer will people still want to hold a book to read?
Alice for the iPAD
Alice in Wunnerful Land, tis curiouser and curiouser.
Ever been moved by a moving picture? Ever found a good read to be a Movable Feast indeed? Then consider:
Each year in the International Gallery, we are presented with some amazing pop-up books created to entertain children of all ages, and a testament to the patience and craft skills of loads of folks who put together these intricate little tableaus. Firms like Worzalla, and Regal Printing Limited and C&C Offset Printing Co. are among those who submit these fantabulous extravaganzas which so delight our judges.
Some years ago, we added websites to the the creative categories we evaluate in each successive International Gallery.
One wonders if e-books for the iPad deserve their own category soonest!
Frequent readers of this blog know that we think every graphic professional's website is improved by the inclusion of a You Tube or Vimeo video. And every once awhile, things go viral. The Alice for the iPad video was posted on 13 April 2010 and in one day had more than 405,000 views and counting.
That's cool, just like the 46 second video.
The Living Book, Chaos indeed
The Living Book, Chaos indeed
From Brazil to Belgium with love. (or hate)
If you rummage about in the IAPHC's website www.iaphc.org, you will find several different articles postulating about the promise of QR codes.
Sometimes, we find something that needs no preface, just watch the video below and think about your smart phone......
From the website of the good folks at Print Power in Brussels, Belgium a video about an online bookseller in Brazil:
The Print Power organisation consists of an Advisory Board of 7 people and a planning and co-ordination team of 2 people. The planning and co-ordination team is based in Brussels and can be reached via info@printpower.eu, on: +32 (0)2 640 0433 or via mail Print Power, Avenue Louise 250, box 104, 1150 Brussels, Belgium.
The IAPHC's Mission/Mandate is to Educate/Promote/Inform/Connect (EPIC) all our members and the global graphic community.
We think it is essential to think global, while making plans to implement local.
And if you do have an internationalist mindset, you may know that Portuguese is a language commonly heard on the Avenues in Brazil. (It is the official language) So we wondered, what is the Portuguese word for hate? And Google tells us the word is:
Odeio
ahh, but the Portuguese word for I Love You is easily found too:
http://thingsihavelearnedinmylife.com/sentence/typography/amo-te
AMO-TE is the Portuguese word for I LOVE YOU.
Many Portuguese believe it’s easier to say I LOVE YOU rather than AMO-TE and they’re right.
AMO-TE is much stronger and heavier. Like a punch in the heart.
It could never be used as it is in English or French: “I would love to
go to New York”, “J’aime beaucoup les crêpes”.
It is much too powerful.
Maybe that’s why it’s so beautiful.
And then the written word. I love every letter in it and the way they link together. M between A and O. The balance of TE. The horizontal line broken by the ascending T.
And the spoken word… It’s beautiful when you say “amo-te”, and then you don’t say anything else, because you can’t. And I love its sound.
And the sound of the rest of the silence.
If you go back and watch the video of the Living Book again, you will see that Amor and Odio are the word versions used for Love and Hate. Shorthand texters rule the world? And isn't hate an odious word?
Cheers,
Kevin Keane -- when our cherished friend and mentor Chris Kerlick was installed as Chairman of the Board of the IAPHC some years ago, he insisted that a song be played that mirrored his refusal to bow to the vicissitudes of life, but rather to embrace the goodness of life, so Chris had us play Louis Armstrong's stirring rendition of: "What a Wonderful World." Indeed.
Tomfoolery on Fools Day
Foolish Fillums on the Foist of April, the Cruelest Month of All!
We write frequently in this space about the amazing speed of change in the global graphic communications industry, and today might be a good day to take a breath and contemplate the enormity of the idiocy that bedevils us all.
