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  • Are You Being Scammed?
    By Bob Hall - Tuesday August 26, 2008
    Okay, we're all adults here so we should be able to handle the truth. The truth is that if you get an email saying you've won the German Postal Lottery or that somebody in Africa wants to give you millions of dollars, you'd be smart enough to immediately recognize it as a scam. However, I've heard about some printers lately who have nearly fallen for an equally unlikely pitch just because it has been posed as a request for proposal — in other words, new business that has come knocking without any effort. Free money. Yes, I know. In this Internet age, business in no longer restricted to geographic areas. If you have a Web presence, you are open to the whole wide world. But ask yourself, why would a missionary in Ghana or a...

  • Virtual Reality or the Virtue of Reality?
    By Bob Hall - Tuesday July 22, 2008
    Recently, there was an article this week on ComputerWorld.com titled "Have your avatar call my avatar: Doing business virtually." It led off with a report on a Xerox meeting and product rollout that was held simultaneously at Boston's Fenway Park and at Xerox Inspiration Island in Second Life. (One Xerox exec supposedly made a rather spectacular crash landing there in her virtual personal jetpack.) The object of this event was to both showcase the new product and to test out Second Life as a vehicle for meetings. While noting that the melding of the virtual world with the real world is still in its infancy, the author says: "Be warned. Many think it's just a matter of time before being 'in-world' becomes as important for business...

  • Last Odds and Ends From drupa
    By Bob Hall - Wednesday July 2, 2008
    * One of the concerns about inkjet production printing is the durability of the printing heads. Maybe that's why every vendor of said equipment was certain to mention their machine's robust heads. For some reason that made me think of sturdy plumbing in a Navy bathroom. * You can't really say some vendors were green-washing their offerings, but some did go out of their way to slap a green tag on everything but the kitchen sink. Our industry is based on putting marks on paper, so the real green is energy efficiency, sustainability, and recycling. The latter might put inkjet at a disadvantage since some substrates can't be recycled and inkjet ink is more difficult to deal with than other inks—at least for now. * In the...

  • The Sinister Side of Extreme Personalization
    By Karen Hall - Tuesday March 11, 2008
    There is absolutely no question that personalized marketing is here to stay. The technology that puts VDP within reach has the potential to revolutionize the printing industry. So before you read this, please understand that I'm not calling the industry's new baby ugly. VDP is only one small, and comparatively benign, part of a much larger trend. That said, listening to the On Demand keynote by David Pogue, the personal technology columnist for the New York Times, gave me a bit of a chill. Pogue focused on the benefits of personalized marketing. He said that soon we'll be able to receive an online newspaper that is totally customized to our interests. It will have feature articles about subjects that interest us and ads for...

  • Get a Life!
    By Bob Hall - Friday January 18, 2008
    An outfit called Vertis Communications is touting its "Decade of Data," which is supposed to be a tool marketers can use "for integrating trusted print media into their multi-channel marketing campaigns." Naturally, I'm all for that. The mention of multi-channel marketing reminded me of an after-hours trade show event last year in which a major vendor of digital printing equipment was touting the virtual experience of Second Life. I couldn't quite figure out why a print vendor would be doing such a thing but that's their business. As I understand it, Second Life gives participants the chance to construct a new reality in which to hang out. Meeting avatar-to-avatar instead of face-to-face probably is more sanitary but not as much fun...

  • The Numbers Tell the Story
    By Bob Hall - Wednesday November 7, 2007
    IN THE NOVEMBER Quick Printing Update I mentioned the results of the 2007 Print Design Survey sponsored by MAN Roland. In brief, 92% of designers work in print and spend 70% of their time doing so. Print buying is growing for 23% and staying steady for 64%. Oh, and 88% do the print buying themselves. Now for the bad news – price remains the number one consideration in selecting a printer – followed by quality and service. Trust comes next followed by digital short-run capabilities and then environmentally friendly practices. To me the fact that price is by far the number one consideration for print buyers means that many printers are failing to differentiate themselves from their competitors. If that sounds a...

  • Fly Away Home
    By Bob Hall - Thursday September 20, 2007
    Well, 50,000 air miles later the 2007 high travel season has come to a close. Trade shows, franchise conferences, association events, vendor briefings, etc. have mostly come and gone. That is a good thing because now my weekends can be used for the really important stuff -- like football games. Herwith a couple of general observations. The industry seems to be of good cheer and optimistic about the near future. Owners who have figured out that they are business people rather than printers are doing the best. Green is the color of the year, but as Kermit noted: "It ain't easy being green."Printers and vendors are just now trying to figure out how and how far they need to go to meet the slowly growing customer demand for...

  • Flap, Flap, Flap
    By Bob Hall - Tuesday July 17, 2007
    Ah, what's life without an adventure? Adobe puts a FedEx Kinko's click-through button on the newest versions of Acrobat and Reader and the printing world goes bozo. Millions of Adobe users now have a straight shot to Kinko's. Unfair competition? Well, maybe – if you are a printer who considers Kinko's to be a major competitor. Maybe not if you routinely send nickel-and-dime, pain-in-the-neck customers to Kinko's to get them out of your hair. The real issue here is Adobe's short-sightedness. The company should have realized that this would cause an outcry from an industry it has constantly courted. Its Adobe Solutions Network program has been a good marketing tool for printers over the years and gives them $2,400 in...

  • Disgruntled Customers
    By Bob Hall - Tuesday December 19, 2006
    Some companies are better at resolving customer complaints than others. I once sent a letter to Stouffer’s complaining about the quality of one of their frozen entrees. They sent me back a letter saying they were sorry I wasn’t happy. It included coupons for more of the exact same frozen entrée I was complaining about. On another occasion, Karen and I were offended and annoyed by the volume and content of the music being played at the local outlet of a national sandwich chain. We contacted the chain headquarters and asked if this sort of music met company policy. They said that it did not and that the local store would be contacted. They also sent some free sandwich coupons, which we used a week or so later – to...

  • New Guru?
    By Bob Hall - Thursday October 26, 2006
    Not that long ago, trendy and hip business practices were based on Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Victory should be the objective and harsh discipline the norm. The latest BusinessWeek magazine outlines some basic principles from Sun Tzu: Greed is good. Be tough. Attack only when victory is likely. Beat the enemy. Winning is essential and requires clever tactics and, sometimes, deception. Ah, but that may be changing. According to the BusinessWeek article, the latest business fad is based on the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu text based on the wisdom of Lord Krishna. Here it is important to focus on your thoughts and actions rather than the outcome. Greed is bad. Be fair. Act rather than react. Seek higher consciousness and be sensitive to...