#PrintBig: Printerview With Washington Graphics

Your resident Print Geek has some very special people to introduce to you today. I met the wonderful Washington Graphics team at #PrintChat, the inkiest Twitter chat in social media land (shameless plug: join us on Wednesdays at 1pm Best Coast Time, 4pm East Coast). Their CEO Bob Morgan and Marketing VP Kate Gansneder impressed me immediately; I think you’ll agree that their positive energy is infectious.

In the interview below, Kate mentions their theme of Print Gives Back. I can tell you first hand that they walk the walk. If you and I are connected on social, then you may have seen a photo of me in an awesome hoodie that says, “Dream Big, Print Big, Be Big.” That sweatshirt was a gift, a show of #PrintLove from the fine folks at Washington Graphics. Naturally the pic made an impression on other social printers, and a friend of mine from Victor Printing got a package of her own. You simply must meet the people behind this remarkable campaign. Enjoy!

Inside Washington Graphics, the #PrintLove Headquarters

Q1) Please give us a brief overview of who you are and what Washington Graphics does.

We’re a large format print house that primarily works with commercial accounts – small, medium & large businesses. We specialize in banners, wall & floor graphics, murals, and business signage; but honestly, if you bring us an idea, we can probably make it happen.

Q2) You started in 1976, so you’ve witnessed a lot changes in the industry. Is adaptation a part of your company culture?

For sure! One of our core values is: Be Champions of Change. I think in an industry like ours, you either adapt or move out of the way for more flexible tech. When we started, we were screen-press by hand (yes, back before semi-automated screen-press hit the market!) and a few staff. We’ve grown into the digital market and found new ways to keep the screen-presses involved; we’ve even hit hard with an online media presence to differentiate ourselves from the majority of wide-format printers. If you’re not looking at ways to be innovative, both in what you produce and how you approach your target demographics, those are opportunities lost.

Q3) You’ve done some really creative social campaigns recently. Tell us about your 12th Man Banner project.

The 12th Man project is one of our community presence campaigns. We’re a shop filled with Seahawks fans, and pride in general for our home sports teams.

The banner idea was born almost on accident – once we took down our holiday banner, we knew we needed something in it’s place. A banner for the Seahawks was a natural fit, and we created an 8’x10′ design that now hangs on the side of our building (we think it’s pretty steal-worthy, but no one’s tried – yet). Then Hawks fever really hit, and we found ourselves coming up with new ways to expand it into a larger reach – shout boards, mini-banners, and even a few products we haven’t announced yet.

We focused this campaign online at first, and then it caught the attention of our hometown paper. We cultivated a custom hashtag and even reserved a branded phone number for the promotion. And of course, we couldn’t leave out our #BeBig and #PrintGivesBack – so we gave away a $250 gift card to the Official Volume 12 Store to one lucky tweeter and then donated $250 in their name to a local charity, HopeLink.

Q4) What kind of response did you get from the community offline?

The fun thing about this campaign is that it’s still going! Since the Seahawks won against New Orleans, we have more time to track the metrics of impact.

As an offline push, we went out into the fan areas surrounding our stadium and personally handed out a mix of 400 shout boards and banners to fans, local bars and gathering spots. The excitement for the boards was contagious – everyone wanted one, and we ran out in under an hour! We’ve gotten a few drop-ins this week and emails requesting additional runs of the banners, so we plan on launching our most requested version online in our store in a few days.

We’ll still be tweeting with our #LoudestPlace hashtag through the 49ers match up, and through the Superbowl, when the Hawks make it. And of course, we’ll be doing a few more incentives along the way, too.

Q5) You’ve been using several of your own hashtags. What are your goals with the branded hashtags? Are they helping you track your campaigns?

The power of the hashtag is so untapped still in marketing, and especially in the print world. When we set out to create the online manifestation of our brand, it only made sense to include our tagline (#DreamBig #PrintBig #BeBig) as our own personalized tags. Our goal for the tags is that they create a liquid presence for our brand – and it’s already showing itself as fans, friends, and even competitors are identifying our hashtags (and even the thoughts themselves!) with our company. Top of Mind Awareness from a hashtag? We’ll take it!

In the campaigns we’ve launched, we start by monitoring a few hashtags we’d like to use. If one is empty, and highly relevant, we start there. Then, we infuse it into every aspect – posts, descriptions, visual, tweets, you name it. It’s been very helpful in tracking our campaigns – and we plan to continue to use these custom hashtags like PURLs for our future marketing as well.

Q6) Where did the Be Big theme come from?

Roughly 3 years ago DreamBig, PrintBig became a large part of our identity. In late 2013, we were refining that brand vision and our core values, and felt we were missing a huge part of who we are in that statement – it felt unfinished.

We did want to keep within that “Big” Mindset (since we don’t like to do anything small!), and felt that Be Big was the best way to articulate that. To us, BeBig is about humility. We can BeBig in our interactions with eachother, with our clients, and with our community. Every time we create something, it’s reach and touch potential is huge – and if we can BeBig through those touches, that’s what we will choose to do. And on the flip-side, we want the businesses we work with to BeBig as well and grow beyond their wildest dreams.

Q7) You already know I’m in love with your Print Big hoodies. Are you using these strictly for direct mail? I’m asking because we’ve seen such a positive response from the print community (hint, hint).

This is one of those “unintentional marketing hit” moments! The hoodies actually started as a holiday gift for our employees. We went on the Christmas Ship dinner cruise, and gifted them to our staff and their families before we got on the boat. We loved that it made us look like one huge family, which is our culture (internally, we refer to our staff as The Core).

We never really intended them to go much beyond our doors, but that’s changed. This current style is just our initial run, we have a few more designs and pieces we’ll be pushing out in the DreamBig.PrintBig.BeBig. line this year, with much greater availability to the world of print.

Q8) What’s next for Washington Graphics? Will we see more exciting integrated marketing examples from your team in 2014?

So much is on our plate for this year! Our marketing plan for 2014 is filled with a mix of offline and online marketing campaigns that reflect our core values and our mission as a whole.

We’ll even be entering a new section of the market towards the end of 2014, and will be onboarding some new tech that will make even bigger and better things possible in our future. And of course we’ll always be looking for ways that #PrintGivesBack.

Feeling inspired? Connect with the Washington Graphics team on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus.