Five Signs You Are a Print Junkie – 2023 Edition

cmyk ink in cans are you a print junkie print media centr

Do you see print everywhere? Do you count down the days until the new printing press or finishing equipment arrives at your print shop? Do you know what Pantone color the sky is? Do you make vacation plans around printing industry events or incorporate them? Do you look at digital marketing and come up with […]

2023 CMYK Manifesto: Disrupt, Disclose, Do Better

Greetings Citizens of the Printerverse and welcome to a New Year! For the first time in 3 years, it feels like an actual NEW year and not a continuation of what I refer to as the uni-year. The uni-year covers anything that happened between March 2020 and December 31, 2022. All the maintaining status quo […]

Twitter Advertising is Dead. Long Live Print!

mario gives the finger from fake Nintendo Twitter account

Print has always been a potent channel for direct marketing and communication, and one of the safest. This is not new information to us. But recent events on Twitter including the image above sent out by ‘Nintendo America’ have sent shockwaves through the socialverse. The reputation and stock prices of brands caught up in the […]

How to Tell if You Are Considered a Print Vendor or a Print Partner

a purple image of a climber offering a helping hand to another climber

If print customers are thinking of you as a print vendor and not as a print partner, you are in serious trouble. You are interchangeable. You are competing on price. You are a number on a spreadsheet. You aren’t top of mind for recommendations or referrals. You are on the way out and you probably […]

3 Ways to Earn Trust Through Collaboration with Print Customers

creative collaboration

The secret to earning referrals and long-term loyalty with print customers for their printing and print marketing needs is really no secret. Creative collaboration is the key to success. Collaboration can take many forms. On the lowest end, we have information exchange and administrative collaboration: emails, calls, job status, pricing, billing, and so on. The […]

A Printer’s Road Map to Marketing Clarity 

road map for success

A clear marketing message is a challenge for most printers. We write and write and write, thinking that print customers care.  They don’t.  I’ve talked about brevity and simplicity – and now I want to focus on clarity. When I perform Marketing Reviews, I see printers struggling to speak to their customers. Too many complicated […]

A Coffee Table Book for Your Company? Do Tell!

blue hardcover books stacked

Your business deserves the very best treatment in telling its story. Elevate it with print! Here’s why, and I believe this with all my heart: Print makes stories memorable. It gives ideas stature.  Statistically, most of us have written carefully-crafted information about our companies. Yet it resides only on our websites!  Why? What if you […]

Leveraging the Power of Digital Media to Grow the World of Print

image of digital media devices

The title sounds a bit like a paradox! But the idea came to me this cold winter morning as I sat with my parents pouring over old photo albums. The power of print to rebuild human connections. Every January I order photobooks of my Facebook photos. They select, print, and send me the album and […]

How a Packaging Nerd Sees Increases in eCommerce During the Pandemic

e-commerce and packaging in a pandemic

As a packaging engineering geek, I constantly look at the packaging that ships to my home.  Ecommerce shipments experienced an explosion increasing 75%-80% in the first half of 2020 versus 2019. For those who decide to forgo the in-store experience, skip BOPIS (buying online, picking up in-store) and opt-out of curbside pickup, the next best […]

Printing United Provides Sweet Revenge For Print Lovers

It has been almost a month since Printing United opened its doors and ushered in a long-awaited trade show that brought much of the industry together under one gigantic convention center roof. Powered by SGIA and NAPCO Media, the show expanded beyond the traditional wide format, screen, and specialty printing offerings found at the annual […]