Digital Printing Hot Spot

How can graphic communications companies make money from social media? In sessions at the Print on Demand Initiative AppForum in Las Vegas last week (Jan. 25-27), Jeffrey Stewart and Robin Tobin of Trekk Cross Media described four ways:

• · By helping clients create a social media plan or strategy
• · By guiding clients in developing an editorial calendar, which is an organized schedule for delivering content
• · By helping clients integrate social media with existing marketing and public relations communications
• · By serving as an aggregator of qualified leads developed in social media

Many companies have neither the time nor the expertise to take advantage of opportunities with social media. Print and graphic communications companies can fill this need.

I had the opportunity to attend the Print on Demand Initiative AppForum in Las Vegas last week where attendance was up 20 percent over last year, to 365 attendees. Many of them participated in a mobile phone poll at the Jan. 26 keynote asking to reveal just how bad 2009 really was by comparing their 2009 digital and offset revenue to 2008.

Many digital printing businesses did well — 67 percent said digital printing revenue grew, and 19 percent reported growth greater than 25 percent. The rest were evenly split among growth rates of 10 to 25 percent and 0 to 10 percent.

In contrast, just 13 percent said their offset revenues grew, and all of them were in the 0 to 10 percent range. The largest category of responses was 43 percent of firms with offset revenues declining by 10 to 25 percent.

Most experts at the AppForum say that the lost offset volume isn’t returning. However, significant opportunities are available to those who effectively integrate digital printing into communications programs using digital media. And that’s encouraging news for our industry.

Are you like the respondents at the conference who saw their digital business grow more than offset? What’s it like in your shop?

In 2009 Xerox commissioned an independent Comparative Photographic Image Print Quality Analysis of print output from several digital presses and conventional photo processing.

This report from the SpencerLab Digital Color Laboratory concluded, “the 4-color Xerox iGen4 Photographic Image Quality emerged as overall best of the digital presses, barely edging out our previous best, the 6-color HP Indigo Press 5500.”

To really understand what that means you have to understand the photo market. Because of cost and production speed, no company I have come across in this business uses more than four colours in photo production. This means that the SpencerLab assessment shows the Xerox iGen4 is now the best product available for digital photo imaging. Their summary stated the following, “The Xerox iGen4 offered the overall best photographic image quality among the tested digital press solutions for photo book applications, and is a competitive option to conventional photo processing.”

I spoke to Andy Tribute, a leading Graphic Arts consultant, and asked him to comment: “You have to admit, HP has done a great job at marketing their liquid toner as ink to the Graphic Arts and Photo Industry. For some reason Printers and Photofinishers believed this and they forgot that consumers of photobooks, whom 85% of the time are women, couldn’t tell the difference!”

That is changing now as Photofinishers and Printers are realising the output capacity of the iGen4 unassisted. I’ve visited a Photofinisher in the US who operates both presses in the same factory. There is one operator for 3 iGen4’s and one operator and an engineer for 3 HP Indigos. Then there’s another Photofinisher in Western Europe who tells me that his iGen4 is 25% more productive than his other 40 engines. That’s a lot of output and a lot of cost saving for any business! I could go on and on….

Is Xerox finally pulling their great history of innovation and inventions into their marketing material or is the market seeing through the smoke and mirrors?

What do you think…

Is color management an endangered species? Or merely a vulnerable species ready to adapt? It’s easy to look backwards at technology extinctions— The real knack is to spot a trend ahead of the pack.

I was recently at a Printing Tradeshow. After several days of standing and doing demonstrations I began to question whether the entire color management industry would survive much longer.

The idea began innocently enough after I was running thousands of photo books on a Xerox digital press at the show. A polite couple from Texas asked me an alarmingly simple question. “We want to buy this digital press but do we really need all the color management from all these vendors? Do we need all these tools?”

I must be trustworthy looking. I gave the couple a balanced answer about cost vs. benefits of color tools. It was my best answer, at the time. Later, I came to question my own answer. Quite frankly, it feels like we are nearly past the need for many of the color tools & techniques.

Truth be told, I make many photo books on digital presses— I’m usually in a crazed rush for holiday gifts. Santa has no time left and drops jpegs from camera to printer. Most important— I get great results!! No advanced color tools or Photoshop. The simple fact is that if my daughter’s hair or face were wrong then I’d receive abuse from three generations of critics!!

In a world filled with blogs, tweets, and 3-D television— Is color management a dinosaur? Is it on the verge of extinction? Or is it merely a vulnerable species?

Tyrannosaurus rex may have new company soon.
What do you think?

It is interesting to see more and more Graphic Arts companies entering the photo space with niche and creative products. I wonder if the Traditional Photo labs and Photo finishers will start to connect with their audience in the same way or will they carry on producing good quality conservative products?

In just the last 10 years, several Graphic Arts Giants have appeared from nowhere and continue to double in size year on year. Vistaprint, Consolidated Graphics and Moo from the UK.

All of them with CEOs & Founders who employ young graduates with no knowledge of the printing industry. Their marketing messages are almost identical— Innovative short run printed products for small businesses or consumers online.

Richard Moross the founder of Moo started off with an idea to promote a hybrid social networking environment that was online and offline. The little Moo photo cards could be given to your friends and colleagues to encourage them to communicate through the site.

However trying to set up your own social networking environment was slow, so Richard teamed up with Flickr in September 2006 and the business almost doubled over night.

The Moo cards have now matured as a product and offer designers, illustrators, photographers and consumers a neat way of promoting their brand using these photo business cards.

Moo now employs 50 people worldwide and operates in North America, Western Europe and the UK producing millions of cards per month.

Check out their website www.moo.com

I wonder if or when the Photo Labs or Photo finishers will follow, or will Graphic Arts entrepreneurs grab this from them? I guess the consumer will decide, what do you think…?

The recent decline in print volume across the globe has had the doom-Sayers out in force again telling tales of the paperless office and of the E-Book readers. In fact, during the 1980’s those same doom-Sayers were predicting that by the year 2000 paper would virtually disappear from the office and be replaced by the battery powered soulless digital devices with the hard screen.

Not so it seems: Print is still alive and kicking. Sure the recession has set us back and we are becoming more acclimatised to the ‘Green approach’, but print is alive and well in 2010. Those of us with PDAs and iPhones are all acutely aware of what benefits they give us but there is still nothing like having that document in hand, thumbing through it and having it in hand without plugging it in or charging it up.

But what about the future… Does print still have a place in our world?

For me, I have to believe that it does—That it will change, but still be here. But the change for the printed document also means that there is a change for the printer, and as we all know printers are not always the most adaptable or most willing to accept change.

For me change means printers need to redefine their place in the document lifecycle chain. That perhaps the printing of a document is not the last act but another link in the chain. Sure technology is catching us up—recyclable paper and eraseable paper all change the scope of printing beyond what we traditionally understand.

The question I have is: Are printers prepared and willing to accept this change and face it head on? The technology vendors out there hold this question close to their hearts and R&D budgets, and printers should sit up and pay attention!

While walking around a previous trade show, I was shocked to find a fellow competitor using a Xerox sample to show their finishing capabilities on a new press they launched. Their inline finisher wasn’t working, so they thought it would make sense to visit the Xerox booth, take our samples and use them during their demo…and sure enough, on the back of the sample it said “Printed on a Xerox Nuvera 288 Perfecting Production System”.

I don’t blame them for choosing to show a Xerox sample when they were in a time of need. My concern was if they were misrepresenting capabilities of their new press.

My point with that brief story is that there is a lot of smoke and mirrors out there. So when considering an inline saddle-stitcher for your digital press, ask plenty of questions and pay attention to the following when evaluating its finished output and specifications:

Staple Placement
If the staples aren’t positioned properly, crossovers within the spreads may not match up correctly. This can make a booklet look flawed and unprofessional in appearance. Staples should be positioned right on the score and fold lines, and folded completely flat to protect readers’ hands from nicks. The best option is a saddle-stitcher that gives you flexibility to adjust the staple, score, and fold locations on the fly.



Sharp, Clean Folds
Scoring weakens paper fibers by indenting the fold lines. This helps prevent toner cracking on heavyweight stocks, maintains image integrity, and allows sheets to fold flatter. Make sure to always check for scoring capability if a saddle-stitcher runs heavyweight stock.

Neatly Trimmed Appearance
When a finished booklet has several sheets, the inside pages “creep” or extend further out than the outside pages. Prepress software can take this phenomenon into account and finishers with face-trimming capabilities produce a more consistent and professional looking book by trimming the ragged edges off. A saddle-stitcher may fold and staple up to 50 sheets — but if it doesn’t trim— you are going to have one very ugly looking booklet.




Full-Bleed Color
By trimming the head, face and foot of a booklet, you produce the full bleed effect that allows images and color to cover the entire finished page. This opens up many opportunities for graphic designers to make your finished document stand out in a crowd. I’ve had trimmed and untrimmed booklets sitting on top of my press at a show and the trimmed booklets are always the first to be picked up and taken away.

There are many other factors that come into play when purchasing an inline finisher. Can it run in an offline mode? Is it truly meant for production volumes? How does it handle trim waste? Can I feed in sheets from another job? And most importantly, was the sample I’m holding finished using this equipment?

Capturing new customers and generating revenue are two important goals for every company, right? What if I were to tell you that one particular campaign helped generate three new clients and over $1,000,000 in new revenue? Did that grab your attention? Or better yet, what if I told you that the same campaign had a return on investment of over 2,100%? This is what the Gabriel Group of Earth City, MO was able to achieve with their winning Best-of-the-Best self-promotion submission.



The Gabriel Group was hunting for new business, and knew they needed a way to differentiate themselves from the competition, while still showcasing their wide range of services. Using the Xerox iGen4 Press, a Creo Print Server, and the FreeFlow Makeready workflow solution, the Gabriel Group created a series of postcards that I found to be very engaging with a combination of colorful photography and attention-grabbing headlines. These large postcards did an excellent job of capturing the attention of the recipient, which was essential as the marketing message for the Gabriel Group were printed on the reverse side.

With a final mailing of approximately 10,000 pieces, the Gabriel Group was able to produce the entire campaign for just under $5,000. This included everything from research to creative development and photography to printing and mailing! And best of all, Gabriel Group was able to accomplish the goal they initially set to achieve. The campaign generated three new clients that represented over $1 Million in new revenue! Talk about a successful and cost efficient direct marketing campaign that generated real results!

To learn more about this campaign from the Gabriel Group (http://www.gabrielgr.com/), please click here to read the case study. For more information on the Xerox Best-of-the-Best Contest, please click here.

I was speaking to Joanna Wright, Research Consultant at Futuresource Consulting recently around photo book production. Futuresource produces all sorts of photo industry data and operates as an independent consultant to the whole media and photo industry.

According to Futuresource, in Western Europe overall digital photo print revenue is expected to decline 6% during 2009. This is largely down to the decline in digital 4 x 6” photo prints at retail (declining 11% in value in 2009) with digital prints at retail peaking in volume in 2008.

However, online orders for photo prints are relatively stable, growing 4% in volume in 2009 but declining 4% in value.

In addition to this, the photo book market is expected to grow 34% in value in 2009 with the vast majority of books ordered online. The photo book is probably the most profitable application in the photo industry.

In Western Europe only 11% of photo books are ordered in a retail store, the rest are ordered online and sent directly to consumers’ homes or picked up in store.

Interestingly, Western Europe is behind the US Market in terms of retail orders where 30% of Photo books are ordered in the retail store.

I wonder how much longer Western European retailers will give up their valuable floor space for a declining market. Or will they catch on to the growing and profitable application of photo books and follow the US model….?

What do you think?

Variable Data printing was born out of necessity some 15 years ago when office users took the drastic steps of merging static and variable elements to give their lives some degree of simplicity. The question I have to ask is, what steps do we take today as printers to refocus the relevance of print in the minds of our customers, the creative agencies and print buyers?

I have a few basic ideas here.

1. Any touch point with your customer base has potential value. Making print more relevant by using a form of variable content management allows us to do this whichever equipment you have.

2. Personalised print messaging that is built around a technology strategy adds even more value, but this is at the higher end of the spectrum, it doesn’t have start like that.

3. Focused communication that is relevant, engaging and timely is a marketer’s dream, the problem is we as printers seem to be slow on the uptake.

Printers today need to embrace change that’s for sure, this is as much in the technology as it is in their business model as it is in the marketing strategy. Value creation for their customers has to be at the heart of our businesses, offering a service that gives relevance and can be measured in terms of response rates gives clarity to any marketing spend.

-JW