Genetically Modified

Over the past few years, there has been a growing popularity in organic food. This has stemmed from the increased knowledge the public has on how our food is made and where it comes from.  One of the primary reasons for the push to organic options is the food industry's production of genetically engineered foods.

Genetic engineering takes the genetics of one organism and puts it into something else. With genetically engineered food, animals and plants are transformed primarily so we can produce more food faster and cheaper. Genetically engineering food has become so prevalent that the majority of processed foods in a grocery store contain genetically engineered ingredients (http://centerforfoodsafety.org/geneticall7.cfm).

There are many who argue that genetic engineering has adverse effects on humans, animals, wildlife and the environment. A recent documentary, Food Inc. (http://www.foodincmovie.com/), focuses on some of these concerns. While there are many concerns, in a world where people starve, is the ability to bring more food to market at a cheaper price a bad thing? It is a moral paradox and I suggest you do a little personal research to come to your own conclusions.

A similar genetic engineering concern has also been recently publicized in the commercial paper industry (Forests Of ArborGen Genetically Modified Trees OK'd For U.S. South).  For years, paper companies have been planting forests of trees to be used for commercial paper. These forests help protect the conservation of natural forests.

Eucalyptus trees are being planted as they grow faster and produce high-quality pulp but they only do well in warm year-round climates such as Florida.  Genetic engineering has allowing the company ArborGen to change the genetic makeup of these trees by modifying them to withstand freezing temperatures which will enable their growth in states north of Florida.  The concern is that these genetically engineered trees will invade the natural ecosystem. That could cause a number of problems. ArborGen is confident they can control the trees but questions still remain.

Again, as with genetically modified food, this creates a moral paradox. We know trees are good as they take in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. Is it bad that paper companies are looking for more ways to increase the number of trees put in the ground? From the paper company's perspective, the alternative is to use trees from natural forests but no one wants that. In the effort to produce more trees and paper though, one has to be concerned about genes being transfered from a genetically engineered tree to a natural tree especially when it is believed by some that the eucalyptus tree uses more groundwater (lowering the human supply) and could be more flammable.

There are strong arguments for and against genetic engineering which creates the dilemma. Perhaps in a few years we'll have conclusive knowledge to know whether genetically engineering our food and our trees was a good or bad idea.  

Printing With and On Your Food

If you are familiar with this blog, then you know that I often try to compare cooking and printing techniques.  I compare the two because most people understand cooking and food basics but not so much with printing.

On the surface, cooking and printing have nothing to do with each other.  However, despite these differences, there are many instances that utilize food directly in print and vice versa.  This blog post is dedicated to exploring a few of those times where the concept of food and print work together.

• Chocolate Graphics (www.chocolategraphics.com) prints on food by embossing photographic images onto chocolate with chocolate.  This embossing technology simultaneously allows them to produce 3 dimensional images with chocolate as well.

• Cantu Designs (www.cantudesigns.com) meld food with science, technology and art to create a new type of futuristic culinary experience.   Chef Cantu has created a number of print and food related technologies such as edible paper and desktop printers where the print cartridges are filled with food-based inks that include foods such as carrots, tomatoes and potatoes.

• AIB (American Institute of Baking) and FDA help certify and ensure food packaging and labeling compliance on your every day print items you find in your grocery store.  They help printers follow guidelines on food grade printing ink requirements.

• Soy-based inks are non petroleum-based inks that are created with vegetable oils.  These inks are often the choice for environmentally conscience customers as they emit considerably less VOCs (volatile organic compounds) and are biodegradable.

• Edible rice paper is often used in cake designs to transfer a photo quality image on the outside of frosting.  A designer can draw and color designs on the paper or even run the sheet through a food safe edible ink printer to achieve more detail.

Perhaps printed materials that you can eat will be the biggest opportunity for printing to stay relevant in a digital world.

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.

The 100% Original Blog Post

Cool title, eh? Does this prepare you for something completely original? Well I should say mostly original as I've covered Post Consumer Waste paper in a past issue. Wait, since I'm just including web links of other people's ideas, it should be even less original than that. Okay, so before I dive into this, let's rename this post to The 10% Original Blog Post.

Sorry for my diatribe, but it is worth pointing out how often a name, title or label can deceive you into thinking you are getting something that you aren't. This is the case in printing and cooking. In printing you have terms like FSC, 100% recycled and Post Consumer Waste (PCW). However, this doesn't mean that you're making the most environmentally friendly choice. Breads do this too with labels like multi-grain and whole-grain. There are no guarantees that buying bread with those labels will give you the healthiest option.

FSC (Forest Stewardship Counsel) assures that a customers paper product comes from forests managed to conserve biodiversity and support local communities. However, FSC does not mean that a recycled stock was used. I equate FSC to multi-grain bread. Multi-grain sounds very healthy but that doesn't mean that it is. There is no requirement that says multi-grain bread must contain whole-grain. Click here to review the differences between multi-grain and whole-grain bread.

Recycled paper doesn't mean 100% recycled. It may only be 10% PCW which is common for many recycled coated stocks. With recycled paper, to find the most environmentally friendly option, look for high PCW percentages. PCW is recycled paper that has been recycled after it has already left the mill. Paper companies will tell you something is 100% recycled, (composed of pre-consumer mill waste) but if it hasn't even left the mill and been used at any point by the end user, does this really sound recycled and environmentally friendly? A similar misconception is also found with whole wheat bread. Many whole wheat breads still contain all purpose white flour with gluten. The reason for this is you need the gluten found in white bread flour to make the dough "doughy." (Click here for more information on the chemistry of bread). So in actuality the whole-grain bread you buy may only contain a small percentage of the whole-grains that you want. Also, just because a bread contains wheat flour does not make it a whole-grain bread. I found a blog that offers some useful tips for buying healthy bread that I recommend: http://blog.healthyeats.com/blog/2009/06/15/aisle-by-aisle-buying-healthy-bread/