Reinvent your customer base. Launch new products that fulfill needs in novel ways. Show customers you are a purveyor of ingenuity, not an order taker.

By Ken Macro

The BOB Award

In an attempt to attract new business from new target markets, a commercial printing operation in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, decided to develop a new product called the “BOB award,” based on the name of the company’s president.

Having recently invested in wide-format printing and flat-table automated cutting equipment, the company created a 12˝ stand-up cutout of Bob, the president, with his picture altered to look like a bronze statue. They printed 30 of these BOB Awards per sheet, mounted the sheet to foam board (along with a stand cutout) and then cut them on a Kongsberg iCut table.

The awards were handed out to employees caught doing things correctly and who possessed a good attitude. Because of the success of the BOB Award within the company, the sales division decided to sell the concept to all of their existing customers and prospective customers.

The new product not only brought in increased business from existing customers, but also provided a catalyst to open doors with customers with whom they have had zero interaction.

In-plants must similarly assess the needs of the departments and divisions within their constituencies and conceptualize, create, design and manufacture products that fulfill those needs in novel ways, while promoting the mission of the organization. In doing so, doors that were once closed, departments that were once impenetrable, people who were once skeptical, can be reassured by the reinvention of print through the newly created products purveyed through the in-plant.

Snoop Lion gets it. Or at least his advertising agency does.

Dr. Ken Macro

Lyrics from the rapper's songs were printed on 10-lb. onionskin with a perforation at the gutter and bound together with a hemp-covered case and a red phosphorous textured spine. Rolling Words debuted at the 2012 Coachella Music Festival in California where 420 elite and rare "prototypes" were handed out to fans of the hip-hop star formerly known as Snoop Dogg (but whose real name is Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr.). So highly coveted were these books that websites have appeared specifically designed to demand that the product be mass-manufactured and sold.

But why all of the fuss? I mean, it's a book after all, and books are passé, right? All of the American retail book stores that once populated every town across the country are rapidly disappearing only to defer their customers to the online storefronts, which allow you to simply download content onto shiny e-readers and i-devices. In fact, in a socially-driven wave of self-fulfilling prophecy, the era of printed ephemeral and publications—as we know them—has gone the way of the Betamax, the Linotype and the Pet Rock.

How many people have subsequently canceled printed newspaper subscriptions in lieu of electronic versions only because their neighbors said that the newspaper was going to stop producing a printed version anyway? We have talked ourselves into believing that the printed product is, in fact, already dead. Many of us staring into retirement have decided that the time to cash in is now. Pack up our boxes and our things and think of good times from years gone by.

"We gave it a great run," said a former press operator who retired from a prominent printing company in San Francisco that recently closed in doors. "We can't compete with these electronic gizmos; everybody gets their information online." So says mainstream America.

Fulfilling a Need

But Snoop Lion gets it (or at least his advertising agency does).

By developing a product that engages your senses, your needs, and—most importantly—promotes novelty (albeit activities that are not condoned nor endorsed by the author or publisher of this fine magazine), the impetus is not placed on the content as much as it is placed on the experience and on fulfilling a need. The demand for Snoop Lion's book was based upon the novelty of it. It isn't cool because it is "a book"; rather, it is cool because it is a well-designed novelty item that represents his culture. This is innovation and this is called product development.

Designed by the Pereira and O'Dell advertising agency, Rolling Words became a product that fulfilled a need. And this is how in-plants must begin to think as they prepare to strategically position themselves into the core mission of their parent organizations.

Swimming in the Blue Ocean

The 2005 book Blue Ocean Strategy, by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, suggests that traditional Western management ideology focuses primarily on competing directly with other suppliers in an existing industry—the Red Ocean. All resources go into outperforming the competition by building a strategic position based on defense of a familiar industrial-based space.

The Blue Ocean, comparatively, represents an unknown market space, bereft of competition, where an organization can create new demand. These are the uncharted waters of value innovation where, according to the authors, "you focus on making the competition irrelevant by creating a leap in value for buyers and your company, thereby opening up new and uncontested market space."

In the printing industry today, uncontested market space has expanded into marketing solutions, Web design and development, ancillary services, mailing and shipping, wide-format and grand-format printing, and any other unique, trendy special business services that pop up in the field.

Although these service opportunities can be profitable and provide much-needed value for one's customer base, the nagging and haunting question keeps rearing its head: "What do we do with the iron sitting on our floors?" The answer is

About the Author

Dr. Ken Macro is an associate professor and chair of the Graphic Communication Department at The California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. He leads courses in marketing and sales, print production management, post-press processes, and teaches the Introduction to Graphic Communication class. Prior to academia, he was the director for Reprographics, Mailing and Shipping Services at both Cal Poly and The University of Akron, and has held various sales and management roles in the graphic communication and healthcare industries. His new book, The Future of Print Sales: The Renewal of Print Manufacturing through New Product Development, was published by Printing Industries of America Press. Contact Dr. Macro at kmacro@calpoly.edu.

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