"An Ode to Digital Printing," By: an offset printing rep

For anyone who has any general concern in the printing industry, the latest craze has been digital color. I won’t deny digital color has made long strides to reach near-offset quality. And certainly I won’t deny that 1 to 1 personalization has proven incredible responses on direct marketing campaigns.

But, it has its faults (e.g. small sheet sizes, no true color matching, no metallic inks, varnishes, and coatings, etc.), but frankly, I’ll be the bigger man and admit it…variable color is still pretty neat.

But just like anything in the printing industry, it has its place. For example, the maximum run volume is typically 5,000 impressions before the cost of offset becomes more viable. This is because the main costs associated to digital printing are variable, and correlated to the volume of a job. Typical costs of digital printing are: 1. Pre-press (which are normally fairly fixed as most digital print jobs don’t incur that much pre-press), 2. A flat set-up cost (fixed), 3. A per-click-charge or per-page-charge (which is variable to the job’s volume and can range between 7 to 12 cents), 4. Paper (variable), 5. And any additional finishing charges (which contain both fixed and variable costs).

The biggest costs here are the per-click-charge and the paper charges. Remember when deciding upon a job that requires variable color (or changing copy/graphics), to see if it can be gang-ran with on an offset press. At Acme we DON’T run digital presses, but we DO run significantly larger sheet-fed offset presses in which we produce semi-variable pieces.

For example, you’re a retailer printing a 10,000 piece direct-mailer in which there are 4 lots with different retail location maps on them. This may be a better fit for a gang-run on an offset press. It never hurts to test the waters both ways.

And that's my two cents...

What do you mean "you already have a print vendor"?

I heard a great comment the other day from a non-Massachusetts-based customer. "There are so many print reps in Massachusetts. In fact, I have three reps from the same company calling on me, and they have no idea."

It’s true; there are a lot of us. In fact printing makes up a whopping 18% of the Massachusetts state economy.

In such an ultra-competitive industry, it is amazing that I still here horror stories like (laughable, but true!):
-"The printer stitched the pockets collated in the wrong order" (somebody would have to TRY to make this mistake).
-"The owner of the printing company gave us a tour of the plant with his button-up shirt, unbuttoned. He was bare-chested and sweating profusely" (so much for business-etiquette).
-"Every issue of [the publication], they print the run twice. The first run always contains quality issues" (what if every time you went grocery shopping, you're food was bad? There are a lot of supermarkets in town, right?).
-Not to mention the QA issues that I see that the customer misses like: pockets that are so misaligned that the pages can't be opened (the pocket hasn't been trimmed on one side) or color issues on two-page spreads.

Marketing Headlines That Piqued My Curiosity

Some Recent Happenings In The Marketing World

The Boston Red Sox was the 3rd highest brand in produce placement for Q1 with 376 mentions. This was only beaten by Coca-Cola and a popular night club chain.
My Comment: Do they need the placement with all of the wins this year? I’ll bet management has problem selling tickets to home games.

The average Phoenix, Arizona resident will crank out 26.3 ounces of sweat per hour this summer, making it the sweatiest city in the U.S.
My Comment: Not only is this pertinent to the health products industry, but doesn’t this relate to the beauty products, HVAC, real-estate, food and drink, and a handful of other industries? Hey Gatorade, did you hear me?

Six Parks, the park operator, has acquired 40% of Dick Clark Productions, which is a co-producer of Fox hit "So You Think You Can Dance" and several prominent awards shows. The goal is to use TV brands and characters to boost park attendance.
My Comment: This came a few days before a recent Six Parks accident in Kentucky severely disabled a young girl.

In letters to five of Kellogg's chief competitors, Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., demanded that they implement limits on advertising to children similar to those announced by the cereal maker last week.
My Comment: I’ve seen the Honeycomb commercials and they even make a grown man like myself crave the sugary cereal. But as far as the children, who really makes the decisions? Shouldn’t we market daily nutrition and better health programs to adults, in order to combat this?

Also, I just wanted to mention that if you'd like to be on the free Acme Printing monthly newsletter, regarding printing industry news, please send me an e-mail to let me know!

Does the basketball your selling look like a giant lemon?

So I had a great conversation the other day about color management in commercial printing. It's so frequent that I've found that many retailers and catalogers haven't truly grasped the appreciation for color matching! Whereas, in reality color can make or break a potential sale. For example, if "John Doe" sees a pair of pants in a catalog that he would buy, but not in the printed color, when in reality, the printed color doesn't represent the true product color, then the cataloger has inadvertently lost a sale!

My advice, ask for samples of your printer's work prior to the job. If the crossovers/spreads don't match colors, or the page has a tint of C, M, Y, or K, or the fleshtones represent the color of a Gremlin's face, then there may be an issue! Additionally, go on press-checks. This will insure that you are in charge of how your project turns out.

Make sure that color MAKES the sale!

What the heck is stochastic printing other than a pretty picture?!

Whew...nothing like getting nitty-and-gritty on a Friday evening. I had someone mention stochastic and staccato printing today. So I thought I'd share the story.

The Definition
There are two primary rules to stochastic printing:
1.) The pattern of dots is randomized, and
2.) The dot is significantly smaller than the standard line-printed dot. Density is determined by a frequency of dots in stochastic printing.

Basically in regular (or AM) line screen printing, the size of the dot shrinks or grows to basically portray a change in percentage or lightness/darkness of an image. In stochastic (or FM) line screen, the size of the dot doesn’t change, but rather the frequency changes.

If you’ve heard the term staccato thrown around, this is basically an upgraded version of stochastic. The primary difference is that the size of the dot in the mid-tone range (40 – 60%) increases ever so slightly (FM 25 as opposed to FM 20…the 20 and 25 being a micron measurement). After much testing, it was discovered that the smaller dot made the image a little grainier than the rest of the tone percentages. This was a simple change that seemed to smooth the entire image out.

The Benefits
AM screening, or stochastic/staccato printing, is a great way to re-produce high-end, detailed photography. Additionally, it is a great way to give high-end jewelry (especially glass and clear gems) more life and curvature. Stochastic/staccato is also seen in: nature and human photography (staccato especially performs well with flesh tones), and detailed still life photography.

The Negatives
Many printers establish an upfront service fee for stochastic/staccato printing. On the other hand, many estimators estimate the increase of make ready time/material it will take after each plate change. Regardless however, there is some cost to this service. So as I recommend to all my customers, stochastic/staccato printing should be something that is planned appropriately prior to go to press.

That's it! Okay...more fun stuff after this post...I promise

Eco-printing checklist

Well, my allergies are going hog-wild today, so everything that I’ve mentioned about saving the environment, I’d like to take back. Just kidding!

Here are a few ways that materials on a print job can be environmentally friendly.
Paper – 1. FSC and/or SFI certified? 2. Contains recycled Post-Consumer Waste (PCW)? 3. Process or Elemental Chlorine free? 4. Is it manufactured with "Green Power"?
Ink – 1. Soy based inks? 2. Does it contain aqueous coating versus UV varnishes? 3. Does it contain metallic or fluorescent inks, foil-stamping, or non-water based glues, as there are more eco-friendly alternatives?

Ultimately, there are other ways of improving your production as well (e.g.: using cleaner mailing lists…which saves postage costs too), but these are a good start. And all of these changes have minimal to no cost increases to a commercial print job.

Corporate responsibility turns a higher profit

So I've been thinking, what if all this "Forest Stewardship Council and eco-friendly printing" is actually good for business.

Here's what I mean: I recently had a conversation with a founder and CEO of a socially responsible corporation. We discussed the two competitive advantages of any company, price or differentiation, and he explained that by instilling value in his products (one of which was acting as a socially responsible corporation) he was able to differentiate his product offering, and in turn, capture a significantly larger profit margin than his competition. Surprisingly, there aren't many companies out there that choose this same path.

Margaret Hodge MP, United Kingdom's Minister of State at the Department of Trade and Industry had this to say in a recent seminar:
"CSR [Corporate Social Responsibility] and making money are linked and complementary...A company’s success and its responsibility are two sides of the same coin. Commitment to sustainability can help promote a brand image and market position – it will become an intrinsic part of business purpose and our shared endeavor to conserve the planet."

So I suppose the simple equation is: position your product/service as having value and differentiation (whether it may be environmentalism, community responsibility, or whatever) and you can sell your product at a premium. More importantly, it helps you sleep easier at night.