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

to create uncontested market space—the Blue Ocean—through the development of products that subsidize existing print sales and open doors to untapped targeted markets once unnoticed or unreachable by traditional sales tactics.

Strategic Product Development

Long gone are the days of order-taking. Today, strategic product development that can give reasons for establishing rapport with print buyers, designers and creative staff within the organization are required. (See sidebar.) In order to sail the waters of the Blue Ocean, you must recognize that it is about reinventing your customer base while servicing your existing clientele. It is about identifying the non-customer.

"To reach beyond existing demand," wrote Kim & Mauborgne, "think non-customers before customers; commonalities before differences; and desegmentation before pursuing finer segmentation."

Monthly Product Launch

The key is to design, develop and launch a new product each and every month. Have a preprinted swatch booklet to drop off with each new and existing customer monthly. This will ensure that you will get into their space. And, although it may not generate droves of volume or significant revenue, it will ensure that you are well represented and seen now as purveyor of ingenuity—one who generates products through manufacturing processes that use sophisticated traditional and digital printing presses. This is far better than being viewed simply as order-takers desperate for soliciting high volumes of non-existent print from a constituency of people who question the validity, and ROI, of investing in the in-house graphic communication establishment.

Snoop Lion gets it. In his song "Rebel Way" he writes:

"Time is moving fast.
Can't dwell on the past.
Make the moment last.
While we have the chance."

Even if you are not a Snoop Lion fan, you must take council of his words. We can no longer think like we used to think. We must become highly entrenched with the parent organization, put on our creative caps and become the designers, innovators and inventors of products that can be manufactured using the very technology that we possess. Our destiny does not lie simply in disseminating information, but also in navigating the Blue Ocean of uncontested markets that will keep our printing presses moving and our customers (and parent organizations) talking.

Snoop Lion gets it, so why don't we? To think from Snoop's perspective, we must consider entering into a movement that attempts to change society's stance on the destiny of print. To do so, we must not be afraid to step into the water of the Blue Ocean. To put it into Snoop's terms, from his song "Here Comes The King":

"Here I come a steppin inna the dance.
Posted the wall here inna mi stance.
We never fail, we only shine with brilliance."

Yes, Snoop Lion gets it. Do you?