IWCO Direct, a leading provider of integrated direct mail production services and marketing solutions, announces the expansion of its variable digital production capabilities with the addition of a Xerox iGen3 digital color press.
Squarely impacted by the “triple assault” of the recession, rising postage rates and growing marketer preference for low-cost digital communications, total U.S. direct mail spending declined sharply in 2008—falling 3.0 percent—and was accompanied by an even more significant cutback in mail volume, according to a white paper released today by Winterberry Group, a leading strategic consulting firm serving the marketing industry.
The four newest members of The Print Council are industry veterans and dedicated professionals with a sincere passion for the business of print. Custom Data Imaging Corp., Alcom Printing Group, The P.A. Hutchinson Co. and Panaprint, Inc. understand the strength and power of print and the need to work together in educating the next generation.
The JDF User Group, an open forum for users and vendors of JDF-enabled systems, will host its next meeting at Japs-Olson Company in St. Louis Park, Minn. on March 25-26, 2009. There will be a tour of the facility followed by a full day of meetings. The meeting topic is the business decisions and choices which are required for CIM and JDF automation. The answers will reflect CIM and JDF automations effects on profitability profitability, enhanced productivity, and brought in new customers.
With a dramatic decline in mail volume reducing the need for the facility’s core of acquisition mail, IWCO Direct announced that it was closing its Elm City, NC, facility, leaving 380 workers without jobs.
Printing Impressions’ Letters to the Editor for December, 2008.
IF THIS magazine chose to hand out an award for the biggest newsmaker of the year, the 2008 honor would go to Quebecor World (QW), hands down. One might contend that the attention, while merited, is not the type of exposure a company would want: Financing issues, trying to sell an unprofitable venture and muddling through with bankruptcy in two countries. But Quebecor World is a printer for our economic times, the No. 2 in North America at a time when market leaders (Circuit City, AIG, Lehman Bros.) have come crashing down.
The Print Council is stepping up its drive to unite print providers and media decision-makers behind the effectiveness of printing as a marketing, entertainment and educational medium. The accelerated effort is spearheaded by two new membership recruitment brochures produced by Council member Jet Inc., and a recently launched series of advertisements that were created by Council member NAK Marketing and Communications.
Just one year after the launch of Print in the Mix (PIM), a comprehensive clearinghouse of research on the effectiveness and value of print media, The Print Council, RIT, and six universities around the country who collaborated on PIM say that printers are reporting positive benefits as a result of using the information found on the site.
NEW YORK—September 3, 2008—Marketing agencies stand at a critical crossroads. Changing consumer priorities, a proliferation of new media alternatives and increasingly complex multichannel integration requirements are driving up the pressure to develop and execute seamless, flawless campaigns. And clients are compounding the pressure, expecting their agencies to master an array of marketing execution tools just as well as they master the creation of a new advertisement, landing page or direct mail piece. For all the complexity inherent in their work, though, agencies are only now beginning to awaken to the critical role that technology plays in their marketing process. And despite the emergence of
