No Soup for You - Does My B2B Company Really Suck This Much?

Recently I was looking for a few new ways to give my printing company a little social media boost and I ran across a small company that has created a full-service social media management solution, Main Street Hub. After visiting one of their landing pages, I submitted my information to their online form requesting a free social media assessment. A few days later they sent me back an email thanking me for my interest but letting me know that it doesn't seem like my business is one that they can service. Instead, Main Street Hub solely focuses on providing their social media management solution to local, brick and mortar retail businesses.  Overall the email was cordial, but at the end I was left with the same problem I started with, how can I improve my social media marketing efforts?

I applaud Main Street Hub for knowing who they are. There is something to be said for creating a niche and getting really, really good at that type of business. We could all be so fortunate to be in a position where our business was growing so fast we can pick and choose our clientele. They simply believe they can't service me or choose not to because I don't fit their ideal customer mold. I get it, I'm not in a business-to-consumer (B2C) industry and I can certainly tell you from experience, it's not exactly easy to engage with customers through social media as a printing company. It's a hard problem to solve. But when I look at this email, all my mind sees is opportunity. What if there was an expert who understood exactly how to help me with my type of business? Chances are there are a few brave soles like this out there but I just haven't found them yet. But that is something I'd certainly be willing to pay good money for!

I know a lot of business owners might be familiar with this type of rejection, especially those with business-to-business (B2B) companies. And when you look at all the marketing resources available out there, it seems a majority of ideas and solutions are created with B2C businesses in mind. In fact, it is extremely rare to pick up just about any marketing book off the shelf and find that many examples of brilliant marketing strategies implemented by B2B companies. Why? For one it's harder but two, it's probably because it's boring content as well. No one wants to hear about marketing strategies of the Dunder Mifflins of the world! Instead they'd rather focus on some cool new digital campaign by Zappos. And while it makes sense to me that a brand like Zappos would bring more social currency and buzz with it, as they have a significantly larger customer base than your average B2B, what doesn't make sense is why so many marketers avoid the challenge of solving problems for B2B companies. B2B or B2C, money is still money. After all, a recent article in the October 2013 issue of Inc Magazine pointed out while promoting the benefits of investing in B2B start-ups, "They are really good at making money." Call me crazy, but a company with solid cash flow probably has a few extra dollars to spend on marketing.

I know my printing and marketing company solves problems for just as many B2B outfits as we do for our B2C clients. As a B2B company ourselves, it seems only natural that we should help our own kind. But the true irony of the message I received from Main Street Hub is I bet they are extremely good at B2B marketing and would actually be the perfect company to help my business! After all, they got me to their site through the use of good PR and well placed banner ads, they got me to download an informative white paper from their cleanly-designed landing page, they offer good content and they subscribed me to their email list. Not to mention they have over 3,000 likes on Facebook. Not bad for a small B2B company. So if they are going to go to the trouble of collecting all these leads from B2B companies, do something with them!! Heck sell these leads to me, I'll find a use for them.

My challenge to those reading, if you're a marketing company trying to grow your business, stop ignoring us! Yes, our businesses can be extremely difficult to understand and rather boring but once you get it, you suddenly become an expert in a less competitive landscape. How many other agencies would you be up against who are self proclaimed experts at marketing third-party logistic services for example? Also, while the response rate for B2B marketing efforts may be low at times, the ROI can still be very high as a B2B sale is typically in the thousands of dollars range. While a consumer facing marketing campaign may require a year round investment of both time and resources to generate results a B2B company can sometimes make their year with just one simple deal. I think I'd rather solve the problem of trying to find just that one B2B customer rather than the thousands needed to sustain a B2C.

Google Isn't Perfect and Why You Must Build Your Brand Beyond SEO & Online Marketing

My business depends on the popularity of direct mail. Of course it's no surprise then if I tell you that the past few years have been a little scary with all the popular attention digital marketing has received. What started with simple banner ads and basic Google adword campaigns has morphed into an all encompassing online lead generation strategy where only the strong survive. Those with the resources and smarts to ensure they consistently rank #1 in Google are capturing market share at unprecedented rates never before seen. And is this a fair system? Is trusting the wisdom of Google a fair way to decide the outcome of an economy? 

Today, if your not on page one of Google then you're all but dead to the online world looking for your services. The solution? Hire a really good SEO expert to do a number on your website. But, in doing so you run the risk of segmenting your brand away from potential customers. Take for instance the tale of two banks. Say I'm new to the Tulsa market, so I do a search for "Tulsa banks" in Google. Note - the results of this search were captured on October 14th, 2013 and are subject to change. At the top of this search is F&M Bank, a small local bank with nine Oklahoma locations and three in Dallas. In addition to F&M, four other local banks also reach page one but to my amazement, I have to go to page two to find Bank of Oklahoma (BOK). Not only is BOK the largest local bank in Tulsa, with over 100 Oklahoma locations, it's one of the 50 largest banks in the United States! My eyes must be deceiving me for how could BOK be on page two!?! 

What is it that F&M Bank is doing so well that BOK isn't? Well, maybe not anything. If I tweak my search to "Oklahoma banks", suddenly information about BOK appears but I have to go all the way to page six to see F&M Bank. So is F&M good for Tulsa but not the rest of Oklahoma?  Not at all, but their SEO and content marketing strategy could potentially limit them to these types of results. Because with SEO you have to make choices. And these choices often disqualify you from a key segment of customers you would like to work with.

One of those critical choices F&M Bank has made that influences their Google ranking on certain keywords is with their website title, "F&M Bank | Tulsa - Owasso, OK | Dallas - Fort Worth, TX". By including Tulsa in their title, they are making F&M Bank more relevant to Google in regards to being affiliated with Tulsa. And because Tulsa is a relatively small market, something as little as a title can make a huge deal. But not surprisingly though, they do not show up on page one of a "Dallas banks" search, due to greater competition in a much bigger market (in fact they don't even rank in the top 100 results for "Dallas banks"). So how exactly can F&M expect to grow in the Dallas market when there is little chance they'll ever rank high enough to gain attention via internet search results? Note - the Google algorithm uses hundreds of factors to index and rank web pages with page titles being just one small influential cog in the big machine. To understand other ways you can influence your ranking, consult an SEO specialist or contact me and I'll be happy to give you a starting point.

The reality that F&M Bank and businesses everywhere face is that in order to gain attention and grow, more traditional forms of advertising must be incorporated. The last thing that I would tell you is that SEO isn't important. To the contrary it is extremely important. But, SEO and content marketing is a bit of a zero-sum game typically not effective enough to enable a business to gain all the customers it needs to thrive. And that is exactly the reason why a supposedly old-age business like mine, that offers print and direct mail solutions, can continue to service customers, add value and actually grow our sales in the year 2013.

Every year, billions of advertising dollars are spent with newspapers, billboards, magazines, radio, television, email marketing, word of mouth, POP displays, branding campaigns, messaging campaigns, print ads and of course direct mail. So, for anyone to tell you that print or any of these other forms of advertising are dying, they just aren't educated enough on marketing to realize that all of these continue to generate customers a return on investment. And perhaps the greatest irony of continuing traditional advertising methods is that they typically help you improve the results of your overall SEO and content marketing plan. But because you may then spend less on digital marketing, the fact that going traditional still works is the dirty little truth many SEO marketers just don't want you to know.


Author's note - I'd love to hear from you about what traditional advertising methods work for you. If you are kind enough to comment on this post or share with your network, please give a shout out to your own favorite old school advertising method. #directmail

Why We Tip In Cash And Still Love The Mail

Every Door Direct Mail (pictured above)

My wife and I were sharing dinner recently at a Tulsa restaurant when it was time to pay. Our server had done a good job of being attentive while not overbearing so we agreed that a gracious tip was in order. As we customarily do, we handed the bill with our credit card to the waiter and proceeded to both open up our wallets and start digging for any bit of cash that we might have. Unfortunately, on this night though we only had a few dollars (about 10% of the bill) so we put the whole tip on our card.

This story might sound familiar to many of the cash tippers out there. For us cash tippers, we know the value of a cash tip as it’s the only definite way to know that your waiter has received the full reward for their good service. The value of a cash tip is that it’s real, in physical form, with every penny ready to deliver to exactly the right person. They take it home that night. And while physical cash holds no greater value than cash on a card, the closer and more physical it becomes, the greater the emotional value grows.

If we stop to look around at the world we live in, the cash tip phenomenon is at play all around us. Things become more valuable in physical form. And this is exactly why something like direct mail continues to be such a powerful advertising tool despite the significantly cheaper method of email marketing. Direct mail is a non-filtered form of print advertising that has the ability to connect with a person in a far greater way than an email never will. And despite what online marketers love to tell people, direct mail is here to stay. In fact, smart marketers are moving back to traditional mail because of it’s proven ability to create an easily measurable return on investment.

A recent study by the marketing firm Epsilon Targeting indicated that 73% of U.S. Consumers prefer direct mail for brand communications because they can read the information at their convenience. This shouldn’t come as a surprise as the study goes on to state that 73% of Americans say they receive a lot of emails that they simply do not open and that 70% received more emails in the past year than the year before. The pendulum towards email marketing over traditional direct mail can only swing so far before over saturation dilutes a message completely. 

The best marketers understand the importance of cross channel marketing. A well constructed multi-touch campaign that combines direct mail, an inbound call center and email is sure to outperform any single form of communication. But to exclude direct mail is short sighted. Just as a cash tip is the easiest way to ensure you are properly tipping your waiter, direct mail is the easiest and least invasive way to ensure your message gets to exactly the right person. And just like cash, it becomes extremely powerful in physical form. And if the recipient has any interest in the message at all, it will probably get saved, even if just for a few days. The power of a direct mail piece sitting inside of your potential customer’s home is obvious. If the recipient simply places direct mail on a table, takes it with them to work, attaches it to the fridge or cuts it up and inserts it into their wallet, direct mail has the potential to be viewed hundreds of times before it’s tossed away, either directly or indirectly. It’s billboard marketing inside a home. It’s cash in your wallet. It’s tangible. It’s real.

The Five Immutable Laws of Building a Quality Mail List

Paint a Picture - If you had to paint a picture of your existing customers, what would they look like?  What environment would you draw around them in your picture?  Mail to that picture. Are your customers young, in hip clothing and hanging out in coffee shops or would they perhaps be sitting by a lake in plain clothing, feeding the ducks?  Understanding who your customers are demographically and the environment they choose to place themselves in is critical to building any targeted mail campaign.  Direct mail should aim to evoke and connect to the emotional experience of the recipients everyday life.


Stop Reinventing the Wheel - While there are many data companies out there that will simply enable you to purchase consumer or business lists based on parameters and demographics that you set, the real value that these companies provide are their pre-defined specialty lists. Simply put, they have already done the work for you. Chances are if you have an idea of your customer there is already a niche mailing list built for them. Companies like USA Data, Experian & Accudata will sell you a specialty list that could be anything from brides-to-be to home-school households. In addition, many magazines publishers and direct mail catalogs will sell you their list. Stop in your local bookstore and checkout all the specialty niche magazines available and remember there is a targeted mailing list behind everyone of them. For a more extensive listing of magazines check out Bacon's Directory of Magazines, Oxbridge Communications Standard Periodical Directory or Writersmarket.com. Catalog listings can be found in The Directory of Mail Order Catalogs from Grey House Publishing.


Go Fish - Have you ever dropped your business card in a fish bowl at a restaurant with the hopes of receiving some future gift card? If you have then chances are those establishments are taking your information and plugging it into a customer database to be used for future advertising campaigns. Whether you're using a fishbowl or a sign-up form it is imperative that you constantly be recording new contact information. Everyone you meet is a potential lead. How are you gathering this information? Are you asking your customers and fellow employees for referrals? If people run across your website or advertisement are you enticing them give you their information? Fishing for new leads is an easy way to build a strong mailing list and a commitment to doing this on a daily basis is critical.


Knowledge is More Powerful Than Imagination - When communicating an offer with a mailing list, why throw darts at a board with potentially irrelevant advertisements? The design might look great but if the content doesn't fit the person then the message is lost.  Information about customers is one of the key components to a highly targeted direct mail campaign. Keeping good notes about a contact's interests and recording purchase history can help you target communications about your products and services to the specific customers who will find your offer relevant. The right offer to the right customer at the right time can be achieved with information.


The House Always Wins - While there is an endless supply of lists available for purchase targeting every demographic and customer group imaginable, the list that you keep of all your own customers and prospects, also known as the house list, will consistently give you your best response rate. Your house list already knows who you are, connects to your brand and understands your product. Direct mail advertising must always be mindful of the needs for their existing customer database when implementing campaigns.

Book Review - Rework

Rework
by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson

Rework is a business book that every manager and entrepreneur should read.  It written merely as a collection of thoughts on a variety of topics such as productivity to branding and the result is a book that shows you how to build, run and grow a business.

The wealth of knowledge this book contains should cost a fortune to learn.  I have never read a single business book in all my years that had more take away value than this particular book.  It is that valuable and there is undoubtedly something for everyone.

Trying to summarize the book in a few paragraphs but give you some take away value at the same time is almost impossible so because of that I have assembled a quick summary (these are notes and highlights that I took while reading various chapters that struck me as valuable).

Key points highlighted and summarized:


Learning from mistakes is overrated - when something fails, yes you learn what not to do again but what do you really learn to do?  Instead, success shows you what actually does work, something repeatable that you can do again.


Be careful of longterm plans as they are merely guesses - it is okay to wing it and decide what you are going to do now as opposed to getting stuck making choices just because that is the plan you set for yourself.  Long term plans stifle improvisation.  They are important but when making choices, you usually have the best info at the time you are doing something, not when you are planning to do something.

Be mindful of workaholism - working for work's sake.  Working more hours doesn't mean you care more or get more done, it just means you work more. Workaholics cause problems because they like working hours as a badge of honor but they also tend to not get work done efficiently as a result. They claim to be perfectionists but this is a result of focusing on inconsequential details.  They make others feel bad for working less hours even if those other people just find ways to get their work done faster. 


Scratch your own itch - the easier way to make a great product or service is to create something you need. When you solve your own problems you know exactly what the right answer is as opposed to the uncertainty associated with fixating on someone else's problem and trying to fill a need that may not even exist.


If you have a big idea make it and act on it. Try to sell it and don't sit around on it.  The faster you move through ideas the closer you are to finding the one that really is great. 


Draw a line in the sand - stand for something. Have a point of view and know what you're willing to fight for. When you know exactly what you believe in, the choice is clear for customers. They will love or hate you but there will be no in-between.


You need less than you think - there is nothing wrong with being frugal and committing less people, money or resources to work.  If you stop to think about each decision like this you can probably get by with a lot less.


Embrace constraints - working with less forces you to be creative and get by with what you've got. Constraints force creativity and problem solving.


Start at the epicenter - the key thing that drives your business. To find the epicenter ask yourself, "If I took this away would the product still exist?" All the other stuff you do depends on the foundation.


Commit to making decisions. Decide and move forward.  Don't wait for the perfect solution.


Be a curator - decide what stays and what goes and eliminate until you are down to the bare essentials. Constantly look for things to remove, simplify and streamline.


Throw less at the problem - cutback and trim the fat. Improve upon what is left.


Focus on what won't change - the core of your business should be this and not the next new sexy thing. Permanent stays while fashion fades. Invest in that.


Meetings can be toxic - if you must meet have a clear agenda, set a timer and begin with a specific problem. Meet at site of problem instead of conference room and point to real things with real examples End with a solution and appoint a person responsible for implementation.


Long to do lists don't get done. Prioritize visually and break things down into small and motivationally manageable tasks.


Learn to say no first. Get your priorities straight and say yes and no accordingly.  There is more regret at saying yes than no.  Keep things right for you and your product.


Let your customers outgrow you. Just because some of your customers have to change doesn't mean you have to compromise your business. Changing your business just to satisfy one or two customers can make you too tailored to them and not a good fit for anyone else. Then when that big customer leaves you, your stuck.


Don't act on great new ideas on impulse. Let them cool and come back to them in a few days and evaluate their importance with a calm mind.


Make great products not ones that just seem great. Buyer remorse occurs when something seems better at the store than it actually is once you get it home.  That doesn't create longterm relationships. Great at home products get talked about.


Build an audience. Audiences give you a platform to share value driven information.  They listen when you need them too. Quit trying to reach everyone.


Out teach your competition. Tips, case studies and tools that educate them are key.


Be like chefs. All great chefs have cookbooks that show all their trade secrets, recipes and tips. Show people how you do things. No one is going to steal your recipes and beat you at your own game.


Go behind the scenes of your business. People love seeing how things work. They want to see how things are built. They will grow a deeper level of appreciation for what you do.


Be genuine.  Imperfections show the soul and art of your work.


Press releases are like spam. Instead of shooting out generic messages to everyone, make it personal to the person you want to reach.  Call, write a note, make it real.


Overnight success is a myth. It takes years of grinding through the work to get noticed. Slowly build an audience instead and get people interested in what you have to say.


Company culture is a byproduct of consistent behavior. You can't force it, you just create it overtime by encouraging particular types of behavior.


Great environments show respect for the people who work and how they work.  Give people the tools, trust and responsibility and they'll wow you.


When you treat people like children you get children's work. When people have to ask permission for everything you create a culture of non thinkers and a no trust environment. Policing costs time and money and kills trust.


Make people work smarter not for longer.  If you want something done, ask the busiest person. Send people home at five. Your goal shouldn't be more hours but better hours.


Don't scar the first cut. Policies born to correct rare mistakes just create complex and inefficient bureaucracies. Only create new procedures, rules and policies to attack common situations that often reoccur.


Write conversationally in business. Read it out loud and ask yourself if you were saying this verbally would it sound normal?


Inspiration is perishable. If you are inspired to do something today or ready tackle a new idea then do it because the drive, inspiration and motivation might not come again. 

Arrested Development: When Great Ideas Go Unnoticed

Arrested Development was a television sitcom created by Mitchell Hurwitz that aired on FOX between 2003 and 2006. In 2006, the FOX Broadcasting Company cancelled the show much the chagrin of their fan base. Despite the show's raving reviews (listed in 2007 as one of Time magazines "100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME") and multiple awards (six Emmy's & one Golden Globe), "the story about a wealthy family who lost everything, and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together" never obtained the viewership and ratings it needed to be a hit.

There are a number of theories as to why the show never took off, some of which include blaming FOX for constantly shuffling their time slot and not marketing the show well enough. While there may be some truth to those claims, the simple fact is that FOX did a poor job of bringing Arrested Development to their true raving fans, the ones that would spread the message and genius of the show far and wide.

Arrested Development was an intelligent comedy that had themes well beyond just the dysfunctional family dynamic. To succeed the show needed to find intelligent people. But the people who actually connected with the intelligent humor of the show were watching less TV than the average American. This created a dilemma that the show wasn't able to overcome (at least not back in 2006). Great ideas fail everyday for this exact same reason. When you are trying to win over an audience that is in a completely different arena from the one your game is being played, you are doomed to fail.

What FOX should have done was bring the show to its true fans and not wait for people to start noticing. The fans the show needed did in fact consume media (TV and the Internet) they just weren't consuming FOX. Their potential fans were however taking in plenty of the The Daily Show, but unlike Arrested Development, they were able to watch The Daily Show reruns straight from their computers on comedycentral.com.

It's not fair to completely blame FOX though for the shows failings when much is due to just poor and unlucky timing. Take for instance the fact that the show is about a rich and corrupt family's fall from the prominence of corporate America. A story of corruption like this works much better with today's business climate of bank bailouts, lavish CEO compensation and billion dollar Ponzi schemes.

The show would also do better in today's world because of the increased use of the Internet. Hulu, Netflix, OnDemand services and network websites, make it much easier now for a show to be accessed by their true raving fans. On top of that, by adding social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to the picture, you then give them a platform to communicate with you, spread the word and quite literally "become a fan" of Arrested Development. Simply stated, the Internet has become the ultimate platform for great ideas to spread.

The cancellation of Arrested Development teaches us that while timing is an important factor in the success or failure of an idea, you still have to find your true fans in order for your great idea to spread. However, if your fans are somewhere you are not, then stop and go to them.

Book Review - The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding: How to Build a Product or Service into a World-Class Brand

The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding: How to Build a Product or Service into a World-Class Brand
by Al Ries and Laura Ries

I recently stumbled upon this book written almost ten years ago and after finishing it, I was amazed at how well these "22 laws" still hold true for modern day business. The common sense approach that this book takes to branding speaks more to the overall strategy and mission of a company as to the just the marketing side of things. Where as many people might identify branding as just some element of business that marketing controls, no bigger per say than manufacturing is to operations, The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding shows us that the strength of your brand will ultimately be the single most important element in the success of your business. Whether you are starting a new business or looking to improve upon an existing one, these 22 laws are a guide and resource to successfully (or unsuccessfully) building a company.

The 22 laws are as follows (this list would make for a great print out and should be hanging on your wall):
1. The Law of Expansion - The power of a brand is inversely proportional to its scope.
2. The Law of Contraction - A brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus.
3. The Law of Publicity - The birth of a brand is achieved with publicity, not advertising.
4. The Law of Advertising - Once born, a brand needs advertising to stay healthy.
5. The Law of the Word - A brand should strive to own a word in the mind of the customer.
6. The Law of Credentials - The crucial ingredient in the success of any brand is its claim to authenticity.
7. The Law of Quality - Quality is important, but brands are not built by quality alone.
8. The Law of the Category - A leading brand should promote the category, not the brand.
9. The Law of the Name - In the long run a brand is nothing more than a name.
10. The Law of Extensions - The easiest way to destroy a brand is to put its name on everything.
11. The Law of Fellowship - In order to build the category, a brand should welcome other brands.
12. The Law of the Generic - One of the fastest routes to failure is giving a brand a generic name.
13. The Law of the Company - Brands are brands. Companies are companies. There is a difference.
14. The Law of Subbrands - What branding builds, subbranding can destroy.
15. The Law of Siblings - There is a time and a place to launch a second brand.
16. The Law of Shape - A brand's logotype should be designed to fit the eyes.  Both eyes.
17. The Law of Color - A brand should use a color that is the opposite of its major competitor's.
18. The Law of Borders - There are no barriers to global branding. A brand should know no borders.
19. The Law of Consistency - A brand is not built overnight. Success is measured in decades, no years.
20. The Law of Change - Brands can be changed, but only infrequently and only very carefully.
21. The Law of Mortality - No brand will live forever. Euthanasia is often the best solutions.
22. The Law of Singularity - The most important aspect of a brand is its single-mindedness.

These 22 laws are the stuff that great companies are made of. Want to know how strong your own company's brand is? Get this book and go through each chapter one by one and point out how well your brand follows each law. It might even open your eyes to strategy faults in your own organization but it will also give you a clear understanding of the bigger picture of public perception.

A brand is everything. It is who you are. And knowing who you are, what you stand for and how you can make that extremely clear and known to the rest of the world is critical to building a powerful brand.

Book Review - Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life

Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life
Written By: Winifred Gallagher

Rapt is an exploration of how attention plays such a crucial role in the quality of your life. The idea that what you choose to pay attention to shapes your life is the theme of the book as it explores the impact attention has on productivity, decisions, creativity, relationships, happiness and health. Rapt supports its claims with numerous insights, studies and data from both neuroscience and behavioral psychology. Simplistically the book is best summarized with the following quote found in the introduction:

"My experience is what I agree to attend to." - William James

The idea that attention holds so much power over your life should be encouraging because it means it is possible to shape your existence, outcome and daily mood. The human mind can only absorb and attend to so much and knowing how to control this is considered the secret to happiness for many.

The title of the book, Rapt, is appropriate as the term literally means to be completely absorbed, engrossed, fascinated and focused at any given moment. Rapt attention can make time seemingly fly by, create inner happiness and help you concentrate better in all aspects of your life. If you are achieving a rapt state of attention it most likely means that you're seeking out activities and a life that is full of your undivided attention instead of the reactive, unfocused and drifting way that many of us spend our time.

Rapt offers many antidotes to take control of your attention such as meditating and choosing the right activities. Through the power of meditating one should give complete focus to a single task for prolonged periods of time such as breathing. This practiced state of rapt attention increases your capacity for living the focused life. The wisdom to consistently choose enjoyable but challenging activities enables you to work your brain just enough to experience complete "flow" which the books considers the optimal human experience. Flow is better achieved when you choose activities that stretch your mental muscles such as when you are devoting time to a challenging hobby like learning guitar, playing sports, cooking a new recipe or devoting your time to a specific project at work. It is less likely to occur though when you space out while watching TV or when are trying to accomplish twenty things at once while multi-tasking. A consistent commitment to challenging and focused work and leisure produces a better daily experience and in-turn develops you into a more interesting person.

Rapt is a book for life and work. It preaches such timeless concepts as demonstrating self-control, focusing on positive thinking and making sure you give the people in your life the full, undivided attention they deserve. According to Rapt, this is the secret to a healthy and happy life and while we can't be happy all the time, the decisions we make on where to devote our attention and mental energy, goes a long way to shaping our overall life experience. As the book explains in discussing the connection that positive and productive rapt attention has with your overall health and well being, even the longevity of your life depends on the ability to control your attention.

Why Upscale Restaurants Don't Have Pictures on the Menu

Selecting a meal at a fine dining establishment is often an arduous task that requires a great deal of food knowledge. The menu never contains pictures and you have to interpret the meal through the written language of food. This is no easy task either as these restaurants are less likely to use descriptors such as tender or juicy, instead opting for a basic collection of ingredients to identify the food.

The simple fact that the menu isn't designed for all to comprehend or understand creates exclusivity not found on picture menus, not to mention that many view pictures as tacky. An upscale restaurant needs that exclusive quality as that is exactly what makes it appeal to someone who is willing to pay a lot of money for their food and services.

By taking a seat, an unspoken agreement is created between the customer and the restaurant. The customer trusts the restaurant to deliver a quality meal and the restaurant trusts that the customer has the know how to order something they want.

A similar unspoken agreement is formed every time an offset printer proofs a job for press. Unless you're printing digitally, seldom do you receive a proof that is printed on the exact same type of paper that your final product will print on. While you might see a collection of unprinted paper samples, there is no way to know for sure how something will look and feel on a particular type of paper until the job is actually printed.

If you specify a particular type of paper, the printer will usually assume you know what you want and that you have the knowledge and understanding to imagine how the finished product will turn out. You are indicating your professional expertise and acknowledging that you don't have to see the final product to order it. If you are unsure though ask the printer, never guess. Just as a waiter in a restaurant is there to clarify menu items, a sales rep at a printing company is there to help you make sense of paper options.

Be a Yes Man? No Man.

Is what you want to hear different than what you need to hear? One of the biggest problems in business communications, is that too many people are out there screaming yes. We call them yes men. Yes offers immediate gratification and seems harmless at the time but often results in future peril. No requires discipline and the ability to think clearly. Yes is easy. No is hard.

People sabotage themselves on a daily basis by agreeing to the impossible or just hiding the hard truth. It is easy to view no as disappointing, letting someone down, not coming through or not being a problem solver. However, sometimes no is exactly the right answer.

Reasonable people shouldn't expect you to be perfect all the time but if they do, are those the type you want to sustain relationships with? The only thing people should expect of you is to live up to what you say you will do. By always saying yes, you are setting yourself up to let them down.

While I'm an advocate for the power of no, saying no and thinking no are two different things. If your propensity is always to please, you can still say no while thinking yes. Just because you can't personally produce for someone or tell them what they want to hear, doesn't mean you should leave it at that. Instead, try offering an alternative solution or recommending a competitor. People will grow to respect you more as a result.

As you gather with friends and family on this Thanksgiving, take a moment to remind yourself of the power no. Perhaps you can check out a classic Thanksgiving Day movie, Miracle on 34th Street, that certainly embraces this concept. One of the class scenes from that movie shows Kris Kringle, a Macy's store Santa Claus, sending a mother to the competitor Gimbels for a pair skates that her young daughter wants. Word of the generosity spreads like wildfire and Macy's ends up with even higher sales as a result of their new strategy to send customers to competitors if they don't have it.

Now Kris could have said yes and over-promised on something that he couldn't deliver on (after all, Santa Claus isn't real). He also could have simply said no and left the young girl very disappointed and sad. Instead he chose to truly provide the maximum value to the customer by saying no but thinking yes, I can still help. All people would do good to remember this timeless business principle that truly wins customers for life.

Masking our Authentic Self

In life we wear masks. These masks are of all shapes and sizes and they hide our true, authentic self.

Think about it, everyday...

...a salesman is making a promise they know they can't deliver on.
...a company is re-branding just to re-brand (GAP).
...an employee is working to build and promote a product they don't believe in.
...a printer is lying to themselves about the effects of e-readers on the printing industry and not taking steps today to adapt and change.
...someone is deceived by falling into a relationship built on lies.
...blame is assessed to an undeserving scapegoat because the fear of taking ownership of an issue or fixing the real problem overwhelms others.
...an artist becomes a suit.
...a musician or band goes mainstream, moving on from their raving fans.
...a teacher is forced to adhere to a system of education as opposed to touching student lives on a daily basis with unique, thoughtful and tailored methods.
...the truth is hidden.

We wear these masks out of fear of reality. Sometimes we are forced to wear these masks to make a living while other times we wear them because the truth just doesn't seem profitable.

Halloween gives us the opportunity every year to dress up and wear a mask in a more obvious way. In some weird way, many of us represent our true, authentic selves on this holiday more than any other day of the year. As an adult, if I like to emulate a Will Ferrell character (Mugatu) on Halloween because it's fun and makes the other people around me laugh, why is it so hard bring that same honesty, energy and laughter to work on a daily basis?

As a sales rep and marketer, I struggle with this constantly. I'll get so caught up in coming across as professional and portraying a certain image, that it becomes easy to lose sight of who I really am. No one can expect perfection out of people and sometimes just being who you are makes more business sense than the mask that you think you should put on each day.

Long term relationships are build on the kind of tough honesty where people are willing to take off their mask.  However, being your true, authentic self means you are probably not standing in the middle on every issue. When you take a strong position or represent a more clear image of who you are, then you will certainly have more enemies but you'll also create bigger fans. Fans like this will stand behind you through thick and thin. Fans like this make it profitable to take off the mask.

Mass Customization

It is said that Americans are exposed to over 5000 advertisements per day. This number rises every year and it is really astonishing if you stop to think about it. Assuming we are awake only a span of 16 hours that equates to roughly five advertisements per minutes. When I started sales I was told I needed to develop a 30-second commercial. However, at five advertisements per minute, it seems that this should be closer to only 12-seconds!

With this much competition for people's attention, it is no wonder that advertisers see such low response rates. It has become increasingly difficult (and almost impossible) to stand out and get noticed as consumers have developed incredibly strong defenses against advertisements. To the marketer, this feels like trying to kick in an iron door. While everyone else can sit there and try to figure out how to break down this door, the successful people are simply going to look for another way in. This is achieved through customization.

Customization used to be putting your own take on a recipe or imposing your own standards and procedures on an existing system. In this type of model, success is achieved by working just a little smarter than your competition and creatively positioning and marketing your brand to get more exposure. Your customers didn't buy, they were sold to. Somewhere this all began to change and increased brand exposure actually started having a negative impact when the product wasn't completely a necessity, outstanding or different to begin with.

Customization can occur on many levels and it doesn't mean just making a different product. You can make similar products that thousands of other people make but perhaps your customization is in the process or service. Whatever type of customization you are involved in, it must speak to the individual core of the person who will buy and use your product.

The internet is fast to this trend as websites have become highly customizable. News, sports, search engines, social networking sites and email provider websites all let you choose the content you want to see. The more you interact with those sites and are able to tell them about yourself, the more customization they can provide. It's like stepping into a store that sells custom tailored clothing. As soon as you step in the door, they are sizing you up and the more information they have about you (body shape and size, fashion preferences and personality) the better they are able to give you clothing that is completely for you.

The food and beverages industry is seeing the effects of customization as well. I did a search on "personal chefs" and was astonished to see everything that came up. There is even a United States Personal Chef Association. The idea that there are families who want a real chef to sit down with them in their home, understand their preferences and diet and help them prepare meals that are completely catered to each person's individual needs should frighten the restaurant industry.

Frozen foods (one of the most convenient and easy ways to eat) are moving towards the trends of customization. The company Personal Chef To Go, delivers customizable and fresh meals (not frozen) that are shipped right to your home in a thermal lined container.

The trends of customization mean good things for craft brewers as well. According to the Brewers Association, a trade group that represents craft brewers in America, craft beer volume sold was up 9 percent for the first half of 2010 despite beer sales overall being down 2.7 percent. In addition, the U.S. now has 1,625 breweries, 100 more than at the same time as last year.  More and more people are starting to support local craft beer producers and turning away from the mega producers. To keep up with the trends of customization, companies like Anheuser-Busch are turning to their own line of craft-like beers such as Bud Light Golden Wheat. However, no matter how many beers a company like Anheuser-Busch cranks out, they will struggle to capture that essence that makes a local craft beer so much more enjoyable. Craft beers are often created by only a handful of people and the labor, local flavor and originality that is put into the process has as much to do with how satisfying the beer is as the taste does.

So what does this all mean for printers and marketers? You see, unlike food and clothing, humans can survive without many types of products such as printing. A person's advertising defenses are going to be higher when presented with something that isn't an essential need to survival. Therefore, despite the trends towards mass customization, a restaurant can still stay afloat on location, cost, convenience or how well they market themselves.  A commercial printer however, who doesn't embrace customization, will be left behind.

Digital printing and variable data scratch the surface of customization. They allow each piece created to be completely unique to the end recipient. You can even have a specific message that is targeted to a specific demographic.  However, this type of product is still produced in a highly standardized process that groups people into "versions" and not as individuals.

True customization will let the end-user choose 100% of the content and it will master the art of empowering the consumer. You see this happening with self-published photo books and storefront sites that let the end-user order exactly the personalized, user-designed marketing materials they need. Digital printing services are a necessity but to service this changing landscape, printers will have to invest in pick-and-pack fulfillment, inserting capabilities and specialized, labor-intensive kitting services. Custom marketing kits, that are tailored to the individual end recipient, will be the norm. The customer will dictate the entire process and printers that cling to their standards (sizes, stocks, turnaround time) will lose market share. Total customization will be the new standard and the ability to be flexible and adjust to new customer expectations will be the ultimate decider in which printers will continue to have the privilege to produce whatever print projects still remain in the future.

Emerge Conference

Recently I had the opportunity to attend the Emerge conference with a customer I work with. Emerge is a 2-day event covering the latest in print innovation and technology. Held in San Antonio, Emerge 2010 attracted over 750 print suppliers, customers and Consolidated Graphics (NYSE:CGX) leaders who collaborated to propel the industry forward.

As an employee of Consolidated Graphics, this conference made me proud of the printing company I get to work for every day. Not only did the conference aim to bring customers together with their printers by educating on marketing and print related topics from industry leaders, it also provided an environment where I was able to collaborate one-on-one with my customer to see how we could begin applying many of the topics discussed.

There was a downside.  I was limited to bringing only one customer with me. Because of this I have posted the above video to give you a brief overview of Emerge. Over time I hope to share with all Print Chef followers, the knowledge that I gained at the terrific event.

In addition to the informative breakouts my customer and I attended, I was also very impressed with how our large format printing and other specialty print items were applied and on full display throughout the hotel. Check out the pictures below to give you an idea of how we turned the Marriott into hotel Emerge!

Topping the Five Star Printer

Some of the most memorable experiences you will have in your lifetime will take place over a meal in a restaurant. For some, this would include a wedding rehearsal dinner or a first date. For others, these experiences might be the excitement of dining out on a vacation or when your friends and family get together for a holiday feast. Rarely though, will the great meals and moments of your life ever occur in a fast food chain. Quick, cheap and impersonal usually don't equate to a memorable, amazing experience. There is a reason restaurants are rated on a "five-star" system and the law of averages would say that the higher a restaurant is rated, then the more likely it is that the restaurant will deliver on a memorable and amazing experience.

Sure there is place for fast food. You certainly can't beat the convenience, but if it weren't cheap then I'm not sure what the value proposition would be. This theme holds true for any business. Unless you are cranking out widgets and your core strategy is lowest price, you can't afford to not be great in every thing else you do. If a business truly wants to succeed in the coming years, then it better be in the business of creating memorable and amazing experiences.

Take for instance the printing industry. You have your cheap and convenient options available with one-click online printers or the neighborhood quick-copy store. These operations are highly standardized and can get by without great people or product. On the other side, everyone else in the industry is fighting relentlessly to create that little bit of differentiation that makes them a hair better than their competitors. The competition is stiff and just like restaurants, printers are doing their best to create "five-star" memorable experiences.

The five-star printers have world-class quality. They don't miss deadlines. They have a solution for every problem and they invest in bright and intelligent people that provide top-notch customer service.

There is a problem with focusing only on the five-star model though. One of the reasons why so many restaurants and printers lose business to competitors is that if you are only creating difference in a five-star model then your limiting your services. There is a new type of printer out there that stands out even among the elite five-star printers. They are the caterers. Like in the restaurant business (e.g. Why Catering Is Crucial), printers that focus on catering are more memorable and valuable than the most quality driven print shop.

Catering, by definition, means to satisfy and provide what is needed and required. Too many printers have equipment and standards in place that focus on what the printer wants to sell. Some of these printers may be great at what they do but if they are not adjusting the services they provide on a daily basis to fit perfectly to the customers needs, then they will become obsolete.

Printers must be caterers now more than ever. They must give the customer the power to create their own customized experience. Catering is creating personalization. Catering is attacking every problem and opportunity with a blank sheet of paper and not a predetermined set of rules. Catering is to look at a customers business and create a completely customized solution that manages print and improves their marketing. Catering is a memorable experience.

Marketing in the New Millenium

In the April 2010 issue of Deliver Magazine, an article on the future of marketing to different generational groups, discusses the 100 million Americans who are classified as Generation Y – aka the “Millennials” – which have replaced the 78 million baby boomers as the largest consumer group. Generation (Gen) Y, born from 1985 to 2004, are Internet savvy, environmentally conscientious and adverse to traditional advertising. With internet obsessed Gen Y as the largest and fastest growing group of consumers, your first thought might be that the printing industry is in some serious trouble! After taking a deeper look though, I think just the opposite is true. In fact, printing may pose the single greatest opportunity for businesses to capture the attention of Gen Y.

It’s no secret that the Gen Y live in an online world. They exist and live in online communities, tweets, blogs, and social networking sites. They shop and bank online and are even educated in a virtual classroom setting. As businesses market to Y, they recognize the need to appeal to their online senses and connect to them in the virtual world. However, cracking the code and entering into their trusted and guarded online life is something that most businesses fail to effectively do.

Gen Y go about online activities in a comparable way that people go about their lives in the non-internet world. They have routines, or trusted sites they frequently visit on a continual basis. These sites enable them to live their lives with a sense of order and community and they don’t like it when this is disrupted (annoying pop-ups, spam or irrelevant and misleading site content). So just how is a business supposed to get the attention of someone who truly lives on the internet? This certainly isn’t easy as the competition for attention is so great, that offers from even the most trusted sources can be perceived as spam.

According to Pingdom.com, the internet looked like this in 2009:

- 1.4 billion email users
- 247 billion emails sent per day (81% of these spam)
- 234 million websites
- 126 million blogs
- 350 million people on Facebook
- 27.3 million tweets per day

This means that the average user is sent over 175 emails per day and at least 33 of those emails each day are from trusted (non-spam) senders. If you’re thinking that you don’t receive that many emails, it is probably because you aren’t living a completely Internet focused online life such as a Gen Y. In addition, Gen Y have access to over 234 million websites and 126 million of these are blogs. With this many options available, how are you going to get their attention? Do Gen Y even know that you exist or know how to reach you online?

Integrated direct marketing may be the single greatest opportunity to break down the wall that Gen Y have built to stave off advertisers. Integrated marketing incorporates multiple forms of advertising channels into one seamless message that fits nicely together. One of the easiest ways to do this is through the use of direct mail combined with the internet. Just because your ultimate goal might be to drive someone to a website you may think direct mail doesn’t really fit well into your advertising plan. Or maybe you’re a small business you just can’t afford to spend money on anything other than online advertising. These are valid points in deciding how to affordably bring in new customers. However, remember that Gen Y (the biggest demographic opportunity to increase revenue in the coming years) are extremely active Internet users. This means they are exposed to more online forms of advertising than anyone else out there and they have built powerful defenses against them.

To reach Gen Y, more traditional forms of advertising are necessary to capture their attention (such as direct mail, bill boards and television). This form of advertising typically does not focus on Gen Y which means they are more likely to give you their attention if you target them in a traditional way. Even when all of the purchasing decisions Gen Y makes are on the internet, you still have to reach them in a unique and memorable way to get them to participate in your online business presence. Nothing is unique and memorable about one of the 175 emails they receive per day. By gaining their attention with traditional methods that they haven't built up defenses against, you can then promote to them a website or blog that you ultimately wanted them to visit in the first place. This is integrated marketing.

The use of direct mail is the most effective method for achieving an integrated marketing campaign to Gen Y or any generation for that matter. With direct mail, you are able to send cost-effective, one-to-one, personalized communications with a call to action to visit a website. The personalization of the mail then brings more trust to the website. In addition, direct mail is highly visible among Gen Y. Need proof? According to the U.S. Post Office, on average, 584 million pieces of mail are delivered each day to 150 million residences. That is roughly only 4 pieces of mail for every household. If you compare that to the 175 emails an individual might receive, you can paint a clear picture of an opportunity. Furthermore, how many pieces of mail for every household do you think target Gen Y? Do you think a majority of the people born from 1985 to 2004 are currently paying the bills, cutting coupons or sifting through insurance offerings? This is the real hidden and perhaps biggest opportunity out there: almost none of the direct mail currently being sent is targeting Gen Y.

In the coming years, Gen Y are going to increasingly make more and more purchasing decisions that are influenced by their trusted online world. How they get to and arrive at those decisions is up to marketers. Will marketers embrace the opportunities to gain trust through traditional advertising outlets or will they push them away with continual spam offerings? The evidence is right in front of marketers, they just need to act. With the growing number of tight knit online communities that Gen Y are a part of, it only takes the trust of a few for your message to spread like wildfire through their entire network.

For more information on how to profit from the understanding of young consumers, check out the book The Age Curve: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Storm by Kenneth Gronbach.

Iron Chef

On the popular TV cooking show Iron Chef America, different chefs from around the world are chosen to compete head-to-head against an Iron Chef in a cooking battle. The participating chefs must choose their competitor, one of the Iron Chefs who are the best of the best – featuring chefs such as Mario Batali, Bobby Flay, Masaharu Morimoto or Cat Cora. The show features dramatics that make it entertaining like naming the cooking arena Kitchen Stadium and commentary that resembles a sporting event. Each show is unique, as a randomly chosen theme ingredient must be incorporated as the focal point of all dishes prepared. The chefs must create four dishes all within 75 minutes with the help of a team of sous chefs (15 minutes to come up with an ensemble of dishes and 60 minutes to cook them). At the end of the competition, each competing chef faces a panel of judges who grade them on a scale of 60 points (30 points for taste/quality, 15 points for presentation and 15 points for originality) and a winner is declared.

To compete in such as pressure packed situation under a short time frame, these chefs must be seasoned professionals. Cutting corners will ultimately lead to failure. They must be problem solvers, quick responders, fast thinkers, creative, knowledgeable and extremely dedicated hard workers. The same qualities that make these chefs so great are the exact same qualities you that you want in a print sales rep. Print reps can no longer afford to be good at only a few things. There are just too many options out there now and too many people hungry for work. They can no longer afford to have only one specific skill set, similar to the chef who only specializes in a few key ingredients or just chops. Flexibility is a requirement now and you have to wear multiple hats. Simply stated, a print rep can’t just be a chef anymore, they must be an Iron Chef.

What does it take to be the Iron Chef of printing? Let’s for a brief moment, assume printers were judged in a similar fashion that the competitors on Iron Chef are judged. We’ll start with the prerequisite that any printer who wants to compete at the highest level needs to be prepared for ANYTHING a customer throws at them. You can’t afford to only be an expert at the same processes that you’ve always known such as offset printing or promotional products. You must know it all: offset printing, direct mail, digital printing, variable data printing, PURL’s, online print procurement, fulfillment, integrated marketing communications (cross media), demographics, response rates, product differentiation, branding, PPC, CPM, email marketing, and social media. If you can’t have an intelligent conversation with a customer across all of these different marketing channels then you’re going to be just another printer. You must understand your customer’s business inside and out if you are to clearly identify opportunities to offer solutions that enable you to do more business with them. When I receive an email for a print bid that was clearly sent to 20 other printers I can already assume I’m not getting the project. Maybe my price will be on point occasionally and I’ll win a few projects, but in this scenario, I clearly haven’t established any value with the customer and all I’m doing is bidding on printing.

Now assuming you actually make the cut above, there are probably only a few printers left to battle against. So how do you determine who is the Iron Chef out of the remaining lot? On Iron Chef, 30 of the 60 points are for taste and quality of the meal. I think it goes without saying that if you can’t consistently produce a quality print project with good image reproduction, color, cross-overs, trim and binding, then you’re not going to be an Iron Chef. Does it have to be the best of the best in quality? This depends on the buyer, but most of the time no. It needs to be good enough though. If quality isn’t your forte, then you better be great at everything else you do. Iron Chef also presents 15 points for presentation and 15 points for originality. With presentation, how often are you communicating the exact status of a project throughout production? Are your projects produced with a high level of professionalism and is the communication always on point? On the point of originality, what is it that makes your company so different that someone is compelled to work with you? What new ideas do you bring to the table that make your customers look like geniuses?

All of the points are part of the bigger picture and the overall experience that defines who and who isn’t an Iron Chef of the printing world. However, there are still two more remaining key points that I strongly believe should be a given: meeting critical ship dates and responding to problems immediately.

On the cooking TV show, if the Iron Chef doesn’t produce in the allotted 60 minute time, they’re probably not going to win. To meet the time, they make sacrifices and constantly make quick decisions to change the course of their dish. For a printer and ship dates, while all may be important, you are going to miss a few. The key is to make sure you meet the ones that count. Are you anticipating ahead of time if a date is in jeopardy? Are you heading the problem off by offering solutions that let your customers react and adjust schedules on their end? What is the financial cost and impact of a missed deadline? To be an Iron Chef in printing you need to proactively minimize the pain of not meeting a ship date.

In addition to meeting deadlines, you must be address issues immediately. In a custom manufacturing world, things happen and we get that. What makes someone an Iron Chef of printing though is by making sure that if something does go wrong, then the rep is going to work non-stop until the issue is fixed. This sounds like common sense but too many times issues are confronted with the attitude of hide the dirt, throw money at the problem or sorry let the customer deal with it. It is amazing that people are scared to enthusiastically take ownership of issues. How you handle problems directly impacts your quality, presentation and originality. How issues are handled is often the only real difference for a print rep to be the Iron Chef of printing or just another printer.

How to Purchase a Maillist, Market to a Target Audience and Grow Your Business

Buying a maillist doesn't have to be a complicated process. Anyone can do it. Answer the questions below and you'll be well on your way to starting a direct mail campaign. Then, check out the video for a quick overview on how to go about purchasing a maillist.

Who are my customers?
Are they businesses?
- Are they large or small businesses?
- What industry are they in?
- How many years have they been in business?
- Are they headquarters or branches?
- What job title do they typically have?

Are they consumers?
- Are the male or female, or an even mix of both?
- Do they have children?
- Are they homeowners?
- What income levels do they come from?
- How old are they?
- Are they single or married?

Where do my customers live?
- Are they from a local neighborhood or scattered geographically?
- Are they all in a specific city or state?
- If they just moved to the neighborhood would your business potentially benefit from their limited number of relationships?

Why do my customers buy from me?

If they received a postcard what would they respond to?
- What stands out?
- How is it different than every other offer they get in the mail?
- How does it engage them to interact?
- What would make them want to learn more about your offer?

How much can I afford to spend?
- How much can you spend on advertising for one sale and still make a profit?
- What type of return do you project?
- How much does it cost to print?
- What type of postage estimate has your printer given you?
- How much to design your piece?
- Are there additional costs associated with your offer (coupon)?

Finally, have I communicated with my print vendor or marketing expert what my goals are for the mailer and where I want to increase my revenue? I only mention this because printers can be marketing experts too but usually for no additional cost. It may seem like all we do is print and there is no difference between one company to the next, but a great print rep is exposed to a number of different mailings in a given year and usually has a unique perspective on what tends to have success. Even for the print reps that do not follow customer results and really only care about printing, I bet they ALL know what customers do a reprint of a mailing. Chances are if someone is spending money on a marketing campaign over and over again, then they are probably having success with it. Well, at least Albert Einstein would hope so!

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein

Proofing

When you make bread, one of the first steps is proofing the yeast. You do this to ensure the yeast is active (or living) and thus will enable the bread to rise. If the yeast is dead, your bread will not rise and the finished product will resemble a rock. To proof yeast you dissolve in warm water (not too hot as yeast dies at 140 degrees), mix with a pinch of sugar and wait a few minutes for the yeast to foam up. If the mixture is foamy, you know your yeast is active and ready to be used. However, if after 5-10 minutes nothing happens, then your yeast is probably a dud.

There are no guarantees with yeast, and you must proof to ensure everything is going to turn out right. The same holds true in printing. When submitting artwork to a printer, they will proof your files to ensure everything is going to print like your intended design. When receiving the proof, it is then YOUR responsibility to make sure everything looks right. I don’t mean to be harsh by putting the blame solely on you if something is wrong with the proof and you don’t catch the mistake, but the reality is that many printers view a signed off proof the same as a contract. Hence the commonly used term “contract proof” that specifies that you think everything is okay to print. Hopefully you have a true partnership with your printer, where they will also look for issues with files and proofs to ensure all is okay. However, not giving a proof the respect it deserves can seriously cost you some big time bucks.

Why do I stress the importance of a proof, or better yet what can go wrong with a proof? Just ask any printer and they can give you a laundry list of potential issues. For example, your document may have missing fonts and images or low-resolution images. Text may not flow properly causing layout issues (Google “prepress reflow”). The color might not look the same as it does on your monitor. Images on the edge of the trim may be missing bleed (additional image needed to ensure the image runs off the edge of the sheet if small printing, binding and trimming variations occur). If you are uncertain of everything you should look for when deciding whether to approve or not, ask your print sales rep, their prepress manager or search the web.

Why do things go wrong with a proof when there was nothing wrong with the files sent to the printer? To put it simply, the printer changes your file. They have to put it in a format that their equipment can read. When this change occurs, ironically known as RIP, formatting related issues can cause unexpected changes (especially with un-preferred file formats). The printer does this because files come in so many different formats and platforms but the plate processors or digital presses can only read the file in one common language. You can save yourself some pain by finding out what types of files the printer prefers to work with and then design your files in those formats. However, even if you design your document in a preferred format, issues can still occur.

In the new age of printing, where every print project started today needed to ship yesterday, it is certainly easy to quickly scan through a proof to get the project into production right away. Working with multiple customers though, I have personally seen and dealt with the pain of what happens when errors are not caught in the proofing process. A circle of blame ensues where the result is everyone loses.

Spoilage

I was making bread yesterday from scratch and things didn’t turn out so well. I had just purchased a new food processor and was excited to test it out. After puting the mixed liquid (water, sugar and yeast) into the processor I was ready to add my flour mixture. Little did I know that my food processor would automatically drain the liquid from the mixing bowl if the levels rose to high. With me being very careful not to go too fast and mis a step, I added half of the flour mixture and let that sit a minute before I started mixing. Before I had a chance to push pulse all the liquid drained out, leaving my counter top in a mess.

After a few minutes of peeving at my dilemma, I thought I would start from scratch again and give it another go. This time around I was able to start mixing immediately upon adding the flour to begin forming a solid that was impossible to drain from the processor. I slowly added more and more flour but in my efforts to get it just right, I over mixed it, causing the mixture to seep out into the motor and overheat the entire dough. I went ahead and completed the bread but it hardly rose at all and I realized later that I had probably killed the yeast by letting it get too hot in the processor. The third time around was a success, and my bread turned out pretty good, but I was too bummed out to enjoy it.

How many times have you been in the kitchen and despite taking all the precautionary steps and double checking your work, the meal ends up ruined, over cooked or just doesn’t taste right? This cooking example is comparable to the comedy of errors experienced when a typical print job goes bad.

It’s not that your printer doesn’t care about doing a good job. The process is so customized that it is inevitable that things are going to happen. While we can’t avoid the occasional mishap, we can be prepared. To help your printer and your kitchen experience, I have offered a few easy tips to better prepare you for the next time problems arise (or don’t “rise” at all).

• Take ownership of problems in the same way you would successes. Avoid the blaming others and don’t get defensive. This holds true on print projects and when cooking with a significant other!
• Assume the worst possible outcome and take preventative measures to eliminate that from occurring.
• Respond immediately to problems. If your dinner plans fall apart do you just decide to not eat? No, you figure out what resources and options you have left and work immediately to establish a new game plan.
• Don’t take anything in the process for granted. Whether it is in cooking or in a customized manufacturing process, actions have a ripple effect and neglecting one process can cause a series of errors.
• Always establish open and honest communication about the product and process. I want to know what is in the food I eat and how it got there the same way I want to know the exact type of materials used and the production process for my print project.