A Two for One on Print’s Future

This week’s blog will focus on two different, but related, topics. The first is a review of a product release that could have powerful implications for media convergence and print. The second is a look at how groups like APC-NY (Advertising Production Club of New York) and P3 have responded to the need to bring divergent technologies together, offering the real-life laboratory of the business world to influence the decision as to what works and what does not.

Folding What?

Can you quarter fold a tablet, like a copy of the New York Times? They say it is like riding a bike, once you “do it” you will never forget it.

A recent news story from Arizona State University projects the introduction of a foldable tablet:

The story joins other announcements of flexible screen developments by HP, Samsung, e-Reader, Readius and nearly two dozen other similar types of products.

What does this mean? It means much to me. I am concerned that each of the various print, marketing and creative publishers does not have a new technology editor—an editor that would serves as a filter to allow not only DIRECTLY related technology to be announced to the industries mentioned, but also indirect, yet beneficial technology that can be offered to the above-named verticals.

Media convergence 101 is not only the distribution of communications material, but also the dispersion of material that can be used to link, converge, unify or benefit multiple related and unrelated industries.

Think computers, integrated circuits, screen technology and the like. See my point? Where would they be without technological convergence?

The Future of Print is Cooperation

Last week on April 13, 2011, I acted as the moderator for the APC-NY and P3 CHIP event held in New York City. CHIP is an acronym and stands for Creative High-Impact Ideas in Production, and has a strong focus on the Power of Print.

The event was sponsored by two very well known and established graphic and print services associations; it was a stunning success. Originally planned to attract a few sponsors and perhaps 75 attendees, the event broke records—signing up more than 20 table or room sponsors and registering over 220 attendees, with 150 attending.

What was even more unique about the event was the diversity of the sponsors and the convergence of media offered. Sponsors included printers such as Fry Communications and Publishers Press, along with a nice integration of “non-print” companies, including LSN Mobile, Advanced Visual Consulting, Creative Circle, Neenah Papers, POP/POS firms, Red Tie, and lentincular printers such as IGH and others. This array of providers would have been considered an odd coupling in the past, but now it is the formula for partnered success.

The sponsor’s presentations addressed the scope of integrated print based services, such as personalized marketing techniques, print and tablet magazine publishing, color management on paper, and on-screen and motion graphics—not exactly your father’s printing business.

From a media convergence point of view, this event could be considered the start of the revolution, but by no means was it the first shot fired. That first shot was heard long ago. This event and events like it bring together a symphony of different media designed to play the money-making songs of media convergence. The fact that I could actually hear this symphonic future was even more amazing.

It is not just a song; no, this is a concert series, one that will revolutionize the communications industry and most of those in attendance at CHIP got it. Not only did they get it, but this was also the first “print”-based event that I have attended in years that actually had an upbeat tone. I would describe it as cautiously optimistic, even though there was no doubt that—as with most of us—the printers and the other suppliers in attendance are still concerned about the dark economic clouds on the horizon.

But you know what? All of the attendees that I spoke with said we can get past this, we can succeed, we can weather the storm and we are survivors ready to establish that new beach head, that new city, the shining city on the hill that at its core is a green, environmentally safe power station called media convergence. (Notice the word “WE.”)

Yes, the dream is alive and well in an industry that was once nearly written off as dead. Print is not dead; print has changed. The ones who need to worry are the ones who say to me, “We like it the way it was before.” “My clients won’t change.” or “My process is safe.” Those making these statements are the ones that are dead or dying a slow painful death.

After such an event, you can’t bring print down to the deep subterranean level of Hades; print is rising. Not only is it rising, but it’s heading to new levels, levels that are part of the change.

It seems that print has finally said, “Been there, done that. What is the next new thing?” Those who do not accept the future of print being an integral part of media convergence will go the way of the Dodo bird and will be rendered impotent by the natural selection of the marketplace.

A long time ago, I sat at the proposed funeral of print, in disbelief of the many who considered this art form to be dead. Attending this event was akin to the rebirth of the “New Print,” and that new print is very alive, very well and very active.

Print as a standalone media may be weakened, but print as one of the many partners that make up the TOTAL marketing solution is newly defined, growing and redefining itself.

I wanted to give special thanks to David Luke of P3 and to of Ray Battaglia APC-NY. Both David and Ray, along with their members, are just the treatment that print needed. The surgery worked, the patient is leaving the hospital and planning to enter and run the worldwide business marathon known as media convergence.

Is love only skin deep, what about profits? Profit with me at thad@nakinc.com or 917.597.1891.