I was having a conversation yesterday with a long time friend who runs retail sales at a high-end outdoor gear manufacturer in Utah. He tells me that market economics do not even allow their marketing department to use traditional print in the U.S. or Canada at this point. In other words, it’s too expensive. Creating and mailing four catalogs a year that would go out to 15,000 subscribers is just not as effective to drive sales as spending the money on website upgrades. Think of it: 15,000 x $1.00 per book to print, another $1.00 to mail, do that four times a year. $120,000. I’d love to be the salesman for that job! No wonder they dress so well. (jealous? Why, yes I am. But that’s another post entirely).
That is the crux of what I’ve seen happening in the printing industry. Because you can use your website as a data collection tool, catalog, and store all in one, marketers would be foolish not to do that. Where does the money come from to enable and maintain your website, keep it fresh, tie it in with your CRM and ERP systems? Printing and mailing, which are (or have been) huge line items in most marketers for 50 years. If I had pressure from my bosses to do more with less, I’m taking money away from printing and mailing, traditional advertising and old media; and I’m putting 3/4 of it into online media.
I realize this will not win me ANY friends in the print biz, but you will find no bigger promoter of print marketing than me, so this is not meant to hurt anyone’s feelings, just an observation.
Yet, printers have solid business relationships with their clients. If the printer can HELP the client move that budget to online media, make it work, make it effective, integrate all the media together (old and new), to me that would seem to benefit everyone. Yes, the printer needs to invest in new skills for the humans who have previously produced ink on paper communication. My guess is that if you are a printer, your people have some downtime right now. So, instead of sending them home with one hand and buying some fancy VDP software or a digital press with the other, spend the money on training and give people the choice to work that 8 hours (or 12 or whatever it is) learning new media production.
About me
My name is Jeff Lazerus and my professional experience includes marketing, graphic design, prepress and prepress management; variable data printing and digital printing management. This blog is my personal portal for online experimentation. I write about creating your own space on the web, new marketing technology, the print business, and metablogs. Opinions are my own, and I hope someone else's as well. Contact me: jeff@jefflazerus.com-
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2 Comments
The lack of standards in software for printing apps has really added to the cost of putting jobs out the door. Proprietary software and file formats, especially in digital and variable data, are expensive and difficult to learn and “don't play well together”, which I believe is a barrier to adoption that digital printing device vendors need to pay attention to.
For instance, why isn't there a standard format for VDP output, that works well for all output devices? If your shop has an HP Indigo, say, and you want to send some files to a partner shop elsewhere that is running an iGen, say. If you have created these files for you Indigo using their software to run on their hardware, you're going to have to repurpose them into a “standard” format like PDF or PPML. Even if you do that, the sheer size of such a PSF or PPML file makes it nearly impossible to transfer and/or rip without a network or server choking on it.
The lack of standardization and open source tools in printing is great for the big vendors. It causes the user to stick to that specific vendor. Which is really painful if you happen to need or want an alternative.
I think I'll write a whole post about this, Laurens, thanks very much for this comment.
Presses, finishing equipment, shipping and of course paper make it inevitable that print can be a more expensive medium.
Another difference can however be found when you compare the software cost of print to that of web publishing. Printers need to continuously invest in fairly expensive applications such as the Creative Suite or a workflow. Some of the biggest sites on the web however were essentially created using and run on free software. They often use Web Content Management Systems that make extensive use of free open source modules.
Why is so much stuff for web publishing free whereas software for print is so expensive?
There are print-specific open source tools such as Scribus or GhostScript. Our industry doesn't seem to be capable however of creating enough interest and drive to turn them into true standards. Maybe industry associations, the press and all of those potential users should put some more effort in getting the same choice of high quality free tools like the web publishing industry enjoys.