If you’re a person of a certain age, you will probably remember those 1970’s TV commercials for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. One of the earliest featured the young heartthrob Robby Benson walking down the street eating peanut butter (never mind how strange THAT was) and running headfirst into a pre-Happy Days Donny Most eating chocolate. Their snacks get mixed together and they exclaim, “Hey you got peanut butter on my chocolate!” “Well, you got chocolate on my peanut butter!” They taste the mixed concoction; declare it tastes great together, and discover Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, courtesy of the pretty girl who distracted them in the first place.
I was reminded of this commercial series recently while sitting around a table with a group of printers who were discoursing on the current state of the industry. I was hearing that business is starting to pick up after last year, but the commoditization of print is making pricing ever more cut throat. In some areas, jobs are being priced at less than the cost of paper. One of the group declared that he no longer wants to be considered a commercial printer, and mentioned that in the past year, he’d changed his company name, hired several programmers and has moved head first into offering an entire suite of marketing-driven programs to his clients, of which print will still be a part. Basically, he went out and got peanut butter on the chocolate—and he’s found a whole new market around the mixture.
The conversation then circled around a topic that’s being mulled over and chewed upon a great deal today, and it strikes at the very core of our identity as an industry. Are we a manufacturing industry {i.e. “printer”] or are we now a service industry [marketing service provider, cross-media publisher, graphic communication company or flavor-of-the-week descriptor that means “not just a printer”]?
I really don’t believe we have to put ourselves into one or the other of those buckets. No matter the name we hang over the front door, the fact is that we can mix up the chocolate of our manufacturing expertise with the peanut butter of the evolving needs of the marketing community that most commercial printers have always served anyway.
That’s what we’ll be talking about here in this new blog. I plan to share stories of businesses that are mixing it up, evolving and thriving. Look forward to hearing your story!
- Categories:
- Business Management - Marketing/Sales
Julie Shaffer is Vice President, Digital Technologies at Printing Industries of America. She heads up the Digital Printing Council (DPC), as well as the Center for Digital Printing Excellence at Printing Industries headquarters in Sewickley, PA. In her position, Julie plays a lead role in developing programs and tools to help members grow their businesses with digital technologies.
Known for her graphic production expertise, Julie has a 20-plus year background in pre-media and print. She is often called upon for training, presentations and to provide on-site consulting throughout the industry on diverse range of topics, including PDF, color management, digital printing, social media and Web-to-print implementation. Julie is co-author of several books, including "The PDF Print Production Guide" (1st, 2nd and 3rd edition), the "Web-to-Print Primer" and the forthcoming "Field Guide to Social Media."