A sunny day in May saw the inaugural Smart Directions conference in London. Michael Walker went to see what was on offer to printers looking to develop and drive their businesses.
‘Smart’ can mean being well-dressed and tidy, but it also means clever, astute, canny, and that is certainly the sense in which it has been used in the Smart Directions initiative that has been running for a couple of years in Digital Printer magazine. That theme continued at the first Smart Directions conference, held at the Royal College of Physicians near London’s Regent’s Park on 13 May.
The conference delivered a broad mix of presenters and material, from motivational speakers and business development gurus to print buyers and marketing agencies – and of course, a goodly selection of printers who were prepared to share their experiences in growing and diversifying their business through digital print technology.
The view from the top
The keynote address was given by business and leadership guru and TV presenter René Carayol, who has served on the boards of some of the world’s best known companies, from Marks & Spencer to Pepsi and, closer to the print industry, IPC Magazines, where he was involved with the transition from print only to print and online.
Mr Carayol described how businesses and individuals increasingly operate in a world that is characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, leading to his first maxim ‘your heritage is not your destiny’. He stressed that there would be no return to times of certainty because of disruptive technologies, and that key to responding to these changes was an enabling culture, a factor that he sees as more important than strategy. Leadership is a crucial component of this, hence his headline topic ‘manage a little less, lead a little more’.
Mr Carayol acknowledges management as a strategy for surviving recession, but breaking out of austerity thinking requires leadership. Encapsulating the differences as ‘management is a science, leadership is an attitude’, he contrasted Barack Obama as a manager, Nelson Mandela as a leader – and Vladimir Putin as an entrepreneur.
Closing with a list of 10 tips, Mr Carayol suggested that keeping to your values and authenticity were key: ‘Everyone remembers how you made them feel, even if they don’t remember what you said.’
Several hours later, the final presentation of the day was also on a management theme. Speaker John Charnock of Print Research International has extensive print industry experience as a director of St Ives and now runs an international consultancy focusing on technology and business change. He echoed and amplified several of Mr Carayol’s statements, including the idea that leaders are not just found at the top of organisations, saying that ‘many employees have leadership capabilities; it’s not an elite club’. The key to unlocking their potential was to provide clear expectations, an awareness of their authority to act, and the ability to ‘think like a boss’.
‘The role of the leader is to create an environment where individuals thrive,’ said Mr Charnock. The next step is to ‘let go and let them do it’, otherwise responsibility is offloaded and the self-belief necessary to develop leadership is not fostered.
Mr Charnock emphasised that every business is different and that as well as setting broader goals and aspirations, each individual needs to understand what they are doing and why, in order to be able to make effective decisions. He sees mentoring as part of the individual development process and urged top management to ‘communicate the big stuff’ but to relinquish the responsibility for decisions to those best-placed to make them.
Coaching and mentoring also figure prominently in the services offered by Bede Brosnahan of Gazing Performance Systems, whose after-lunch presentation was about improving selling performance under pressure. With a background in education and elite sport coaching as well as the business variety, Mr Brosnahan has worked with clients from the All Blacks rugby team to Xerox.
Pointing out that people perform under pressure every day, he explained that many companies operate at comparatively mediocre levels and that performance is a variable that can be improved, rather than an all-or-nothing choice. ‘There’s a tendency to look for a magic bullet, but the answers are usually within the organisation already,’ he advised, saying that structures, skills and mind-set should all be addressed. Systems may be over-complex, skills poorly defined and mind-set may yield only sporadic intensity of focus.
Explaining that pressure arises from expectations, scrutiny and consequences, Mr Brosnahan also made the point that expectations have to be clear, that scrutiny should include processes as well as goals and that consequences needed to be real: ‘Pressure drives performance. It’s the job of leaders to put people and the organisation under pressure.’
Closer to the customer
Understanding customer’s needs and pressures in order to better market print services to them was another major theme of the day. A panel of three print buyers answered questions from conference chair and Digital Printer editor Andy Knaggs, with the aim of sharing their experiences.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the biggest pressures were on time and resources. Mandie Lovelock, production manager at Oliver Marketing, previously print buyer at Honda UK, said: ‘There’s endless pressure on costs, to buy print that looks amazing, doesn’t cost the earth and is done quickly. We have to find someone to help.’
The buyers panel (left-right) Joanne Hurst, Mandie Lovelock and David Pritchard
However, printers’ sales people may be an obstacle rather than the solution, according to Joanne Hurst, European print production manager for the US-owned Lands End mail order clothing company:
‘Printers are their own worst enemies, particularly sales people who haven’t a clue about what you do and who are ignorant about the technologies,’ she said. David Pritchard, managing director of 9 Impressions, which handles national and international design and print management for a variety of blue-chip companies, agreed:
‘We want solutions, immediately. Our customers don’t know the process and the time’s almost run out by the time the printer gets the job. Technical knowledge is incredibly important.’
But the problems are not all on the printers’ side. Ms Hurst commented: ‘Purchasers forget the enormous skill, expertise and ideas available – printers are under-used.’ Honesty and mutual respect are also important values for buyers. ‘Printers are not lackeys or slaves,’ said Ms Hurst, while Mr Pritchard advised: ‘You should call yourselves printers; it’s not a dirty word.’
Print is clearly not a dirty word at the Direct Marketing Association, either. Head of media channels Emma-Jayne McEwan showed a number of examples of multi-channels campaigns in which printed pieces had played a key role, and commented that ‘print is an old medium, but the objectives are new; eighty-eight per cent of direct mail projects are intended to drive web traffic’.
Sounding something of a call to arms for printers, she revealed that 98 per cent of marketers want personalisation, around two-thirds want image personalisation and more than half would like embedded video, all of which are possible right now, but marketers are not aware of it. This may be partly because of terminology differences, as what Ms McEwan referred to as omni-channel, multichannel or integrated marketing is what printers might call ‘cross-media’.
The virtues of direct mail include that it is instinctive, changes perceptions and is remembered. These points were backed up by media consultant Emma Fletcher of MarketReach, with findings from ‘The Private Life of Mail’, an in-depth 18-month market study that showed how persistent, emotionally engaging and effective mail is within the home compared to television and digital channels.
Explaining more about the online world and the opportunity for forging partnerships with creative agencies was Charlotte Graham-Cumming, director of technology marketing agency Ice Blue Sky, who reminded the audience that printers are in the communications business but they should be clear about their own identities before speaking to agencies or their print buyers.
She gave some examples of the scale and speed of digital channels and pointed out that because it offers the same scale of opportunity to everyone, online marketing is now about brains rather than budgets, but added that ‘social media has got to be backed up by something offline’.
Rather than insisting that printers become marketers, Ms Graham-Cumming suggests that they simply be open to new partnerships, as a knowledge of print is essential to agencies. Printers should not be afraid to approach agencies but should be prepared to learn to speak their language, however.
She also pointed to an allied opportunity for printers. Having discovered personalised (variable data) print by accident, she sees the data skills involved in that being valuable to agencies – who ‘hate data’ – when running one-to-one marketing programmes, along with (web to print) portals for brand control.
Helping printers market themselves is a key focus for Marian Stefani of Flyte Associates, whose largely online commercial digital print business led to the formation of web to print software developer Red Tie. And she does think they need help:
‘We’re rubbish at marketing. The industry talks to itself, but it’s not so good at explaining what we do to clients,’ she said, though she does accept that ‘it’s difficult for production-led companies to step outside and see how to promote themselves’.
For Ms Stefani, it is crucial that marketing should not be carried out in isolation; the marketing plan must reflect the overall business plan and must be managed at board level. She advocates finding out what customers want and what they think their printers can do, then implementing a rolling six-month plan with specific campaigns followed up by sales calls.
The activities in the plan do not have to be expensive or very time-consuming either. Ms Stefani introduced her client Lesley Graham, production manager of trade printer Wirralco, who had run a simple survey and cross-media campaigns to gauge her customers’ interest in presentation folders. This led to significant sales and Wirralco now shares its promotions with its trade customers so they can promote themselves.
The printers speak
The theme of printers not marketing themselves well was echoed by Philip Dodd, managing director of Headleys Print Group. His own company’s transition to digital print was ‘slow and sometimes painful’ due in part to the limitations of early Indigo models but also because of a focus on equipment rather than customer priorities. A more recent initiative with Kodak’s NexPress has been more successful, with £5 million of digital print sales anticipated after five years.
Steve Winn, managing director of Blackdog Digital Print, also has long experience with digital presses. The opportunity for his Xeikon web-fed press came when the company was approached by wallpaper designer Tracy Kendall, who had been sourcing print from Germany. The print capability has been complemented recently by bringing design and data skills in house and is now supporting print with email, PURLs and Layar augmented reality technology.
Steve Winn
Another experienced digital printer was Nick Murray, managing director of Wellington Press, whose Indigo and Ricoh presses are fed via web to print software, though Mr Murray reported that it does not suit all customers. A profitable niche has been producing covered video books with presentation pages, not a cheap option, but a powerful way of presenting video. ‘Anyone can do a website, but print shows that you’ve spent money,’ he said.
Marketing has been key to the continuing success of 1st Byte since its earliest days with Indigo presses, said managing director Lawrence Dalton. Advertisements in the design press for overnight turnaround of brochures would draw dozens of calls in the early days, even when one in three jobs were rejected for quality reasons.
Sticking with Indigo led to 1st Byte becoming Indigo’s biggest ink customer but by 2003 it became apparent that finishing was the weakest link in the digital chain, so a specialist with litho experience was hired. A move into luxury items prompted further investment in finishing kit and skills, including a Scodix system, leading to an award for digital finishing last year.
A sideways move into packaging turned out to be a smart move for Remous Print. As margins dwindled in commercial trade work, director Alan Bunter looked for something that would give the firm an extra edge. ‘We looked to play to our strengths – what wasn’t being well-served? Packaging suited the equipment and expertise we had,’ he said.
Analysing what kind of work could be produced easily has led to Remous producing instruction leaflets, boxes, header cards, blister pack inserts, tag labels and box sleeves. This kind of work has the benefit of stronger margins, repeat orders which often use the same artwork and perceived specialist expertise: ‘People are nervous of approaching packaging, so not many are doing it,’ said Mr Bunter.
Diversification was also the key for Acculith Repro, a husband-and-wife team which split from Acculith76 in 2011 to focus solely on digital print. The addition of a Ricoh 651 Pro in early 2012 led to a doubling of digital output in two months and 400 per cent growth in sales in the first year, according to co-director Gaby Purton.
The ‘impulse buy’ of a sublimation printer/cutter in 2013 proved to be a winning investment as it has led to organic growth with margins in excess of 100 per cent and plentiful upselling opportunities. Ms Purton’s previous experience was outside the print industry, which led her to challenge various practices, such as accepting late payment as the norm.
The information-packed day illustrated that smart directions can be taken at every level and within every part of a print company, from the print floor to marketing to top management. Printers may still have work to do to understand their customers and better explain how they can meet their needs but there were some inspiring and honest examples here.
