Written By Bill Michael
Marketing Analyst
Xerox Corporation

You know them: hearing, sight, touch, smell, taste. At drupa, each of your senses will be put to great use, as you will:

• Hear: The excitement of the 1000s of attendees in the print industry having conversations on a variety of topics.
• See: Technology and software that represents the future of our industry
• Touch: Printed samples with specialty media, innovative finishing, and special toner
• Smell: toner, ink and paper in the air as you walk by every vendors stand.
• Taste: German cuisine (maybe for the first time) and perhaps a few brands of German beer with some friends and colleagues.

At the Xerox stand (Hall 8b), your senses can best be used by seeing and touching the applications that we’ll be showcasing live in our stand, including many Best-of-the-Best winners. These winners include: IOS (Digital and Offset), Mediaware (Digital Packaging), MBA Group Limited (TransPromo), Telemail, S.L. (TransPromo), Easy Print (Photo Publishing), Printshop (Photo Publishing). Three additional winners include:

	DG3 Europe Limited (Best Overall Solution, case study) The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, the largest youth charity in the UK, wanted to enable their award winners to create and order personalized Achievement Packs online. They approached DG3 Europe Limited, who mapped out an end-to-end solution using FreeFlow Process Manager™ and the iGen4 with a Xerox FreeFlow™ Print Server – resulting in a 637% increase in usage of the achievement pack.
	De Budelse (Digital Packaging, case study) Recognizing the growing area of digital packaging, De Budelse built FotoChoco.nl to enable orders of personalized boxes of chocolate. Using the iGen4 and FreeFlow Print Server, they were able to sell over 11,000 boxes of chocolate. (your sense of taste!)
	CopyCat (Direct Marketing, case study) Using the Xerox Color 1000 Press, CopyCat used clear dry ink and personalized cross media to drive new business. The campaign generated a 10% response rate and helped bring in 20 new orders from new customers.

Please stop by Xerox Stand in Hall 8B to see and touch these great applications. We’ll find other ways to exercise your other senses!

Written By Tricia Bhattacharya
Worldwide Segment Marketing Manager
Xerox Corporation

As we wrap up In-Plant week, we wanted to highlight the work of another one of our great customers:  InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG).

IHG is a worldwide company with more than 650,000 guest rooms.  The need to have high quality brochures to share with investors and franchise owners is extremely important to their business.  In the past, the IHG purchased preprinted brochures and stocked them in closets and empty offices until they were needed for a sales presentation.  Because of the complexity of the brochure, the cost of each one was about $10.00 per unit.  Obsolescence and waste were issues as well.

The IHG sales department recognized the power of personalization through XMPie at a Direct Marketing Thought Leadership Workshop at our Webster, NY campus.  They then partnered with their in-plant to redesign the brochure so that it could be personalized and printed more economically on a Xerox® Color 1000 Press utilizing clear dry ink.  The result was that they could add relevant personalization AND keep the same high quality as the pre-printed offset brochure, but produce the materials at half the cost.  The in-plant is able to use the new color equipment to migrate other applications from offset to digital, further reducing the need for warehousing and storage.  And I’m going to guess that the people working in the office areas at IHG were pretty happy that they didn’t have to stare at piles and piles of marketing materials sitting in empty closets and offices anymore.

For more information, please see the InterContinental Hotels Group Case Study.

Written By James Tressler
Director of Marketing & Branch Operations
C.P. Bourg Incorporated

What an incredibly compelling and relevant testimonial with an unusual twist ……Finishing automation driving print opportunity. In today’s age of complexities and cross media bliss it is exciting to read about a customer, an In-Plant none-the-less that has found and implemented technologies that have delivered on their promises.

After all, with print becoming more commoditized every day we as manufacturers are challenged to design and bring to market devices that enable our customers to improve their processes and increase their bottom line all the while knowing there are fewer customers and stronger competition vying for their business. However ….. When this process is successful and the right customer gets the right product, amazing things happen. This article is a glowing testament to that very thing.

Jeff Taranto and his team got it right and they are delivering for their corporation on the promise their new technology investment brought them. He has found new ways to keep print relevant and expand its role with exciting results and staggering savings adding significant value to the bottom line. Their success is in no small part the result of knowing and understanding the precise role print plays in their corporation’s ability to deliver the right message to their customer.

Congratulations to the Highmark team, I wish you much continued success!

So what do you think …… can automation in the production environment help organizations make print more relevant, green and overcome commoditization?

Written by:
Joel Basa
eMarketing Manager
Xerox Corporation

Once in a blue moon, a print application will cross my desk that catches my eye. The reasons differ: stunning design, elaborate finishing, personalization, or maybe its vivid color. However, a particular photo book titled, “Anthony’s Prayers,” caught my eye because of the simplicity of its design and more importantly because of story and the content within. I’ve always believed, “content is king.” This was proof.

The Author, Anthony Torrone, has an intriguing story. Anthony is developmentally disabled, the result of a flu-like sickness when he was a young boy.  One day, he decided to write about all those things for which he was thankful.  His writing is simple but so profound and the photo book pairs his writing with photos that have been taken of Anthony through his interesting life.

I could put my “print industry” hat on and comment on the quality of the finishing and how Color House Graphics did an outstanding job of creating a high quality application using the iGen4 but for me Anthony’s story and the writing he has developed is the bigger story. Color House Graphics and others were enablers for Anthony and his amazing story.

Content is king. Creating bodies of work that capture amazing stories is what makes the print industry so appealing. We are very privileged to not be just print operators, marketers and graphic designers but story tellers and dream makers that enable others to tell an even better story.

Have any other examples of great print applications that tell a story? I’m sure you have many…please share your stories.

Written by Brian Segnit
Photo Marketing Manager
Xerox Corporation

I can hear it now, Andy Williams singing those famous lyrics, “It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!” The holiday season is a busy time for both consumers and businesses. As consumers, many of you are preparing your holiday greeting cards, photo book gifts, etc. As businesses, you may be printing these types of applications as your read this.

For those in the retail or print industry, you know the greeting card market has changed dramatically over the past few years – opening new opportunities and revenues.

A great example is SendOutCards who are dedicated to “changing lives, one card at a time.” Using an easy online ordering process, customers select a card, upload a photo, type a message, and click send. The company prints, stuffs, stamps, and mails the resulting personalized greeting card the next day—all for less than the average price of a retail card.

For customers, it’s a simple process. For SendOutCards, it’s a huge business success. SendOutCards uses six Xerox iGen Production Presses using XMPie software to print their greeting cards.  Using an automated process they run production with just one operator for all six presses, with each iGen producing 80 full-bleed cards per minute by maximizing the large iGen 14.33 x 26 in. sheet size. “Beyond just volume, the iGens have also given us substrate latitude, phenomenal color, and great image permanence,” reports Steve Diamond, SendOutCards Operations Manager.

Steve’s team at SendOutCards produces about one million cards per month under normal conditions—and nearly 700,000 cards per day during its busiest seasons. “It doesn’t matter how many cards we’re running, each customer expects the highest quality on each card,” says Diamond. “We can count on our iGens to deliver.  A business can upload its mailing list, choose card options, schedule mailings for different events, and then we do the rest,” says Diamond.  More than 70% of the cards produced include a customer-generated photo. “Photos add to the uniqueness of our cards, and to their personal impact. Because the iGen handles digital images so well, our customers are super pleased with the results”, says Diamond.

Steve has posted on YouTube a video tour of his operation that I love, you can view it at:  www.xrx.sm/B2N

Written by Christy Buchman, Marketing Services at Lexinet Corporation

Abraham Lincoln once said, “The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read.”

Fast forward to marketing in the year 2011.  Lincoln’s quote might be something like this, “The things I want to know are all around – on numerous web pages, in books, in blogs and in the emails I receive every day.  My best resource is the one who gets all of the new and relevant information in one easy place to read and understand.”

There are so many exciting and innovative tips and tools that can be incorporated into multiple channel marketing campaigns today – QR codes, personalized URLs, search engine optimization tools, crowd boosting tools, social tools such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and now Google+.  How can you keep up with it all?  And, more importantly, how do you determine what makes sense for your marketing campaigns?  And do they work?

There’s no need to panic.  Just as Abraham Lincoln wanted to find a great source, you should do the same.  Find a source of information that gives you valuable resources for free.  Start with one and then if needed, add to your collection.  An example of a valuable customer resource center can be found at http://www.lexinet.net/CustomerResourceCenter.htm.

A valuable customer resource center should include industry relevant articles, case studies and industry reports that illustrate new technologies and tools and report the results of campaigns that used those tools.

Another valuable resource is an online user group.  LinkedIn has thousands of groups in their network that join people in the same industry or looking for the same information providing a forum for sharing and gathering information.

Don’t worry about all of the blog posts, web pages and emails that you “ain’t read.”  Simply find a single source of valuable information to provide you with the knowledge you crave.

Get even more valuable tools by registering for the InterACT! Virtual Conference & Expo held on August 23, 2011 from 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.  Register by clicking here.

Written by Natalie Serrato, Technical & Social Marketing at Lytrod Software

AARP was looking for a way to replace a time consuming process of printing address labels using Microsoft Word and manually placing these labels on preprinted shells.  They found Lytrod Software’s Variable Data Print (VDP) solution that allowed them to personalize their entire campaign.

AARP’s solution consisted of:

• Lytrod Software Proform Designer
• FreeFlow VI Interpreter (VIPP)
• FreeFlow Print Server
• Xerox iGen3

The initial expectation was to place address blocks onto static image backgrounds to meet short print windows and postal standards. With Lytrod Software’s Proform Designer and Xerox’s FreeFlow VI Interpreter, AARP was able to change their campaign to be significantly more personalized resulting in adding conditional images based on targeted ethnic groups and variable messages dependent on the “readiness” of retirees.

After an initial campaign of over 1 million pieces, AARP’s new solution was proven to be so successful that AARP created two follow-up campaign mailers that not only included variable text and images, but also included a scannable account number to expedite in-house processing.

AARP’s In-Plant has seen a substantial cost savings and turn-around time for jobs has decreased significantly.  In one case, what used to take 4 days to print now prints in less than 7 hours!  AARP’s print volumes grew so much in 2010 that they purchased two additional Xerox iGen4s.