Business Management - Marketing/Sales

Soon after this column appears, many printing companies may find themselves struggling on the unfamiliar terrain of a deflationary contraction. Even companies that have done well during the long period of uninterrupted growth—now perhaps about to end—may be faced with new and severe challenges. Before winter is over, slower demand may begin to reduce the number of cylinders in the market. Or not. I'm reluctant to predict an imminent downturn. I'm just not sure the hard times are really waiting for us around the next turn in the road. Moreover, I know little about deflation, too little to be confident of my advice about

Along with several other people, I was inducted into the printing industry's Soderstrom Society last month. I haven't read the Soderstrom Society by-laws yet, but I'm sure that membership gives me broad powers. For example, I now have the power to ban things in the printing industry that I don't like. Be it ordained and decreed that all print buyers henceforth shall purchase printing based only on quality and service. This means that "price" will no longer be a consideration. Printers are inherently honest people, who would never gouge buyers, so why all the fuss over a few dollars? Furthermore, I proclaim and demand that

I love those old good news-bad news jokes. In the best of them, the bad is unexpectedly derived from the good. On close examination, what seems at first glance to be good news turns out to be a mixed blessing, sometimes even a grotesque outcome. The humor comes from the disparity between what we at first expect and what we then learn. Well, there's good news for marketers in the printing industry. And, predictably, the good news is also the bad news. After two decades of struggle during the '70s and '80s, marketing won widespread acceptance in the printing industry. Few printing executives doubt

This is column number 154. One five four! They don't call me old Rhetoric Breath for nothin'. It also marks my 14th anniversary writing for Printing Impressions. By the time you read this column, a whole bunch of people, including yours truly, will be in Chicago at GRAPH EXPO. I'm being inducted into the Soderstrom Society during GRAPH EXPO, and, if I'm not mistaken, you will have to start calling me "Sir Mañana Man" or maybe it's "Lord Mañana Man." The Soderstrom Society is kind of like being knighted or something, I think. There's lots of news as I write this. By the time you

Shut your eyes tight and imagine that you're in the grand ballroom at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. You and everyone in the audience are elegantly garbed in formal attire. You have come to attend the fifth annual Mañana Man's Receptionist Hall of Fame ceremony. Tonight, four new nominees will be inducted into this prestigious society of printing company employees. If you're a regular reader, you will remember that I created this recognition five years ago to honor the folks who greet your customers by phone and in person. They are the people who frequently create the first impressions that lead to new accounts. They

The capabilities brochure is a familiar standby of marketing. Intended to provide sales support, the brochure accomplishes its mission by positioning the company effectively and by describing its capabilities clearly. Sounds simple. So simple that a capabilities piece is often the first marketing communications tool developed by printing companies—often at considerable cost with modest attention paid to its use and less to its value. The brochure is the great unexamined marketing expenditure in many a printing company. The time and dollars that go into the brochure's development and use are seldom examined closely. Its purpose—presenting the company in a favorable light, making its capabilities better

I am pathetic. I am impaired in so many ways. I'm house-painting challenged. I'm wallpaper-and-picture-hanging disadvantaged. I'm chess and bridge incompetent. My mother-in-law tried to teach me bridge and laughed herself silly for the first 15 minutes. Then she got ugly mad at my ineptitude and made me pick up all the cards she'd thrown around the room. Charles, a friend of mine, is a tournament-level backgammon player. I'm clueless when he talks about the game. Charles is also a single-digit handicap golfer and plays a great hand of bridge. (Guys named "Charles" are always smart and multi-talented.) I'm also a fishing idiot. My brother-in-law,

About 10 years ago, when my waist was 10 inches smaller and all my parts were alive and well, I wrote a column about the contributions that the so-called "little people" make to the success of their printing company employers. In 1988, my wit was still quick and I opened the column by rewriting the lyrics of the great old standard, "Little Things Mean a Lot." My version began like this: "Blow me a kiss from across the room. Say I look nice when I'm not. Give me smile if I've waited a while. Little things mean a lot…" My revisions butchered the great lyrics of the composers, Edith Lindeman

A few months ago, owing to the silly deadline imposed by Attila the Editor-in-Chief and his sidekick BakSlash the Editor, I had to write this column on Super Bowl Sunday. This chore, of course, meant that I was working whilst the rest of America was having fun. Another unofficial holiday has rolled around, and again I have to work while it happens. This is Academy Awards Monday, and most folks are attending Oscar parties and eating hors d'oeuvres. It's just as well that I wasn't invited to any of these gatherings because I haven't seen a single nominated movie. My ignorance would have made me

Here's an idea for a marketing activity so obvious, it's easy to overlook. So basic, it works for all kinds of graphic arts operations. Most companies define their programs as the sum of their marketing activities. Asked about programs, more than a few marketing and sales executives respond with a list: a company brochure, several mailed pieces, a Web site, a newsletter, lead generation activities and an annual open house—programs found at many companies. Do these add up to a marketing program? Maybe so, maybe not. It's not the items on the list that determine whether the activities constitute a program. The activities are tactics. What