It’s February! The month of love and devotion and heart palpitations and romance. No, not the month of snow storms and iced driveways and snow days and being trapped in a long desolate winter that will never end. No, fine people. Today we are talking about love.
I am here with good news for you. There is a lot to love about print. So if you are starting to fear that you’ve lost that lovin feelin, just read on. I will help you fall back in love with print all over again!
Here, in no particular order, are six things you may not have considered (lately) that are super sweet about our beautiful, sexy, long legged industry.
1. Celebrities love print Some of you may know who Gwyneth Paltrow is. Oscar winning actress? Named her kids after food and biblical characters? Well, she also has a lifestyle blog called GOOP. And guess what she (or more than likely a staff writer) was talking about on said blog recently? Yep, Print. Here is the opening line of the post “It’s amazing that in this digital age, there are still brave souls out there busting their backs to keep print alive” Yes! What is it that we say to ourselves and each other every single day? Print is not dead! Print Lives! And so, in grand validation fashion, it turns out Gwynnie agrees with us. Nice! You can read the whole entry here.
2. Print has staying power – Have you ever tried to tear an article out of a magazine that you are reading on your I Pad? It does not go well. I don’t know about you, but I have a file folder full of items I have torn out of various newspapers, magazines and pieces of direct mail. I will admit that I find it very challenging to organize digital content that way, so maybe I need to hire a digital professional organizer, but until that time, I’ll stick with reading actual magazines and books and such. (Full disclosure: I do read eBooks from time to time. OK, a lot.) But what I will tell you that, with book club for example, it is a lot harder to go back refer to some particular line or idea when I have read the book electronically. I don’t know how the kids are doing it with text books.
3. Being in sales gives you freedom and independence – So these next 2 ideas are not about print specifically but more about sales as a career in general. When I went into sales way back in the mid 90’s, I did it to get out of retail and get my evenings and weekends back to myself. What I did not know was how much freedom and independence a career in sales was going to give me. Being out on sales calls every day, planning how my every day was going to go; those are very compelling concepts. Now, they are sometimes scary concepts too, but with some great time management and clear goals, you are (SEE BELOW)
4. The Master of your own Destiny – How hard you work, how smart you are, how good you are at your job. All of these things are directly proportionate to how much money you can and will make. No other career can do that for you. Unless you are some crazy entrepreneur kind of genius kid who invents an app and then invents another app and then sells them to Microsoft for a billion dollars. You know what? Good for you!
5. There’s a place for you – Print has a rockin fun turbo awesome community of like-minded weirdoes, and you should join us. There are blogs, there’s #PrintChat every Wednesday, and there are cool Facebook pages and twitter feeds and events being held in every town in America. There are associations and societies. And the Shows! Graph Expo! drupa (if you can get to Germany) And there are your friends the paper vendors and the equipment manufacturers. It’s called Google. Use it. Find your tribe. Or, just follow me on Twitter and do what I do.
6. Print is all the rage with the kids today. Again, just Google it. Millenials prefer print. The Washington Post, Hubspot, and yes, lots and lots of organizations who have a vested interest in print remaining viable and even gaining back some of its former splendor before the internet came and tried to kick us out. But you know who else has a vested in interest in print staying alive?
You do. I rest my case.
As a sales and marketing coach and consultant at Success In Print, Kelly Mallozzi advocates for graphic arts companies to start a revolution and fight to keep print relevant. She may be irreverent, but what she lacks in convention, she makes up for in smart-assery.
Connect With Kelly: Twitter @SuccessInPrint and check out her weekly blog on Printing Impressions.
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