I am declaring the following topics OVER and DONE WITH in 2014!
Anything claiming or alluding to print being dead, dying, or in need of a health plan. Who thinks print is dead? LOOK AROUND! Go into a grocery store. Music didn’t die when they stopped producing 8-tracks, albums, and cassettes; only the delivery device has evolved. Print, is a communications delivery device. If you are only focused on the album version of print it’s actually you, not us, in need of some oxygen.
Anything incorporating the print is dead boomerang! Starting with the premise that print is dead only to turn around and list ten reasons why print is NOT dead, is now dead. As a matter of fact, saying anything is dead is now dead.
Anything claiming print is still a viable communications channel. What irks me to no end is using ‘still’ when talking about print. That is just a fancy way of saying print is not dead, and we don’t do that anymore. If we take out the word still, we are showing power vs. defending prints’ relevancy for the world to see.
Anything related to trying to convince people that “social media is relevant” to business, and the print industry. It’s time to weed out the herd and engage with quality leaders and followers. There are too many barren accounts sitting out there because so-and-so said they had to be on social. Yeah, they do, but not if they aren’t going to put in the work.
Anything related to magically using LinkedIn to make sales. If you are on LinkedIn to make sales, and not primarily to share your knowledge and experience, and create honest relationships, no amount of advice will help you. As a print customer, I can see you coming from a mile away.
I am declaring the following topics of HIGH IMPORTANCE in 2014!
Education: And not just you keeping up with what is going on in print, but seriously devising a strategy, method and channel to educate your customers on an on-going basis. Part of the reason customers aren’t using cross media and data is that they don’t know how. Teach them, and if not you, then bring someone in – you’ll still get the credit and loyalty!
Engagement: If you are having one way interactions with customers and prospects, then why waste your time? Segment and personalize your interactions. Use different channels for different groups, or use a combination. The cast a wide net thing is over. People want instant gratification on specific subjects relevant to their world. The rest is spam in any form.
Finding Niches: New technology brings with it new opportunities and new areas of growth – if you know where to look. Follow consumer TRENDS and make investments to meet those demands – whether print, pixel, or both.
Supporting Our Own: Go to an event, join an org, subscribe to an industry magazine, advertise in an industry magazine, signup for an industry newsletter, share information with and about the industry, help the industry fight greenwashing by joining Two Sides (find one in or close to your country), and things of this nature. United we stand, divided, we’re just divided.
Playing Both Sides
Creative Destruction is an economic term used to illustrate the demise of one thing to make way for the growth of another. We have been living this for a while as manufacturing is giving way to technology. That doesn’t mean there is, or will be, no more manufacturing. It does however put the emphasis for growth, and economic gain on the new, and less (sometimes even none) on the old.
The Print industry occupies a very interesting space in this ongoing shift as it has a vested interest in both manufacturing and technology. The press makers have been innovating for years and incorporating technologies to help printers help their customers achieve the best results, and software companies are helping to automate processes internally and externally amongst other things. It’s all good except one thing… the perception of (some of) the market.
Is Print an iPod or a CD player?
Both are viable music delivery devices yet one is seen as the past, and one the future – but they are BOTH here, and will be until CD’s aren’t manufactured anymore. So the answer to this depends upon your attitude toward the shift, and your communications with customers. Are you actively seeking ways to incorporate technology into your products and services to establish relevance in the new economy, or are you remaining a manufacturer of printed goods?
2 Responses
You crack me up, Debrah. I’m with you—the more we as printers talk about how we’re not dead, the more we conjure up negative stereotypes in people’s minds.
It not about death. It’s about revenue. Please tell how the revenue track is? How are the paper companies doing? Please share the ratio between printing plants closing or new one’s opening. I agree, it’s not nor has it ever been about death.
And I like your term in reaching a new equilibrium. Hopefully that new equilibrium will be based on sustained revenue and profits. Revenue and profits will be achieved when we get through the great printing realignment now in progress. Those plants that survive the current transformation will do very well as there will be hundreds of billions for the print universe for generations to come. No it’s not about death, it is about modernity in business practices and a diversity of offerings for the new clients. No it’s not about death, but it is about survival.