The Print Council is developing resources that benefit sales reps for an industry-wide cause.

The arguments are as varied as the competition. Web-based competitors thump their chests at the possibilities of a new medium, while seasoned foes in the airwaves and media conglomerates try new tactics that could mean decreased sales opportunities for printers nationwide. More and more, print sales reps are facing questions from customers on the value of print vs. these new mediums.

The Print Council, a business development alliance formed by the graphic arts community, is trying to meet those questions head on. The goal is to influence and promote the greater use of print media through education, awareness and research, according to its mission statement. It’s deployed Web-based resources as well as traditional tools to get the message out, and it’s a message every print sales rep should consider for their own sales strategy.

CANVAS recently spoke with The Print Council Executive Director Ben Cooper about how the print industry is working toward finding one voice, and how The Print Council resources can benefit print sales reps.
 
CANVAS: What is the goal of The Print Council?
Ben Cooper: The goal of The Print Council is two-fold. Our true goal is that we’d like to increase the recognition, awareness and ideally sales — of print. Those are high goals, but really, our simple goal is to promote the broader use of print media.
 
CANVAS: What are some initiatives to help the print industry compete against the increased competition?
Cooper: We did not want to do an awareness campaign. We did not want to do “Print Is Beautiful,” come up with baseball caps and T-shirts and bumper stickers. In promoting print, the marketing professionals told us over and over again, that what [they] want is data. They want real hard facts to demonstrate return on investment. The initial effort that The Print Council undertook was to try to get some of these marketing materials together. What we discovered to our dismay was that there wasn’t as much out there as we thought, and it wasn’t well organized in a place.

Probably the single biggest thing, in my opinion, that we have accomplished in The Print Council is funding the creation of a clearing house at RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology), “Print in the Mix,” which is Web-based, into which we have brought every study we can get our hands on about the role of print communications. If one goes into that site now, you can actually find a treasure trove of marketing research that has passed academic scrutiny. We will not, for example, put proprietary research promoting a piece of equipment or a company’s particular focus. We will, however, put research there that stands up to an academic review. That’s why we chose RIT to do this. We wanted to pick an academic institution that could do this for us. We’ve actually funded a full-time librarian who does this research. She has the support of the academic faculty there, as well as the support of a broader group of universities that are our academic partners.
 
CANVAS: How do print sales reps benefit from the RIT Web site?
Cooper: There are a couple of ways they could benefit. In my opinion, one of our weaknesses as an industry over history has been the tendency to take orders as opposed to generating business. There is probably a continuum of salespeople. On one end of the continuum, you could find the pure order taker, the one who sits in the office and waits for calls. Or you can find the order taker who has a book of business, a group of clients that they call on periodically that it’s time to do this or that piece again.

On the other end of the continuum is what can be accurately described as a sales-marketing professional who is creating ideas and solutions for their customers that go well beyond taking orders. They are creating opportunities.

In order to do that, I think you’ve got to go into a potential client armed with facts and figures. There is undeniably a belief among some buyers of communication tools that you have to have an Internet campaign. An Internet campaign may or may not be appropriate for a certain type of market, but if you’re not aware of the studies that support that belief, then you’re going to have a hard time convincing your client. We’re trying to put together that source of information, so that someone who is going into even a pizza shop or any other kind of local small business, you need to go in and talk to them in terms of facts and figures, return on investment. “If you do this, you’ll get this type of return. We’ve got studies that show that, and here are those studies.” This is being done in other industries, and frankly it’s being done by our communication competitors.
 
CANVAS: What are the benefits of a smaller printer joining The Print Council?
Cooper: A small printer can not be expected to do market research on their own. They are going to have to pull this information from some other source. We’re trying to be that source.

The reason we want support is not so much to grow and become a multi-million dollar association. Our goal is to be able to have enough support to develop enough marketing tools that would be helpful to the industry and then ideally to develop using those tools to have a campaign that will go to agencies and other large national buyers.
Using the words of Gina Testa of Xerox, who is chair of the marketing committee, we’ve divided our world into two targets: the air war and the ground war. The ground war is depicted by our brochure, “Why Print,” and the continuity post card campaign that we did based on the “Why Print” brochure. To some degree, the clearing house is part of the ground war. By ground war, I mean a printer taking data to help them promote print to their market. The ground war issue can also be used by a trade association that wants to promote print within their field of vision whether state, regional or national.

The air war is different. It’s a much more subtle campaign that would be targeted not to printers, but to “media specifiers.” Those would be the people who make large media-buy decisions. To go to those people, you have to have data, it has to be part of a well-organized campaign, and that will take some money. We feel that we are almost ready, we have a meeting coming up, and will have to create the campaign, but once we do that we’ll be in a position to begin the air war effort. So, from a small printer’s standpoint, there’s a great deal of material that they can glean from our efforts, to use in their local markets.
 
CANVAS: How would you define success for The Print Council?
Cooper: Increased sales in print, but that is hard to define. There is no one person who can tell you what total sales in print is. You can’t get a single national number, if you ask three economists you’ll get three numbers. That’s because it is difficult to calculate.

A lot of marketing success is in perception. If there is a perception that the industry is getting the recognition and attention we think we deserve as a communications/advertising medium, then we will feel that we’re successful. In a declining market, increased sales may mean that you don’t decline as much. If you’re an individual printer, and you’re able to increase your sales because of The Print Council, then that’s a success. It’s difficult to come up with metrics to determine success if you’re looking at it from a national standpoint.
 
CANVAS: What are some goals in 2008?
Cooper: We’re doing several things in 2008. We’re having our marketing professionals at companies do a series of articles using “Print in the Mix” data for marketing purposes. In the ideal world, we’ll have different people in the industry do these articles, with our help, based on the marketing data that we have collected so far.

We are also trying to determine if we can develop a peer group marketing exchange, within the RIT program.

My personal goal for 2008 is to begin the process of the air war campaign, developing the information that will go to the media specifiers.
 
CANVAS: How can sales reps differentiate their products from those of other mediums?
Cooper: Salespeople have to be knowledgeable about the other medium. They have to know what works and what doesn’t work. They have to be well-versed in multi-channel marketing. They have to understand that if a company wants to use Internet to promote its product, they have to know that the use of print enhances Internet. If they want to go to an e-mail campaign, they have to understand that the response rate is very low. All of these things are facts and figures. The greater degree that a salesperson calling on a customer, the greater degree to which they understand the competition, the other mediums, is a degree to which they’ll be in a position to sell what they sell better.

Sales people today also have to understand distribution needs. If a product is going to be mailed, the sales rep has to understand the basics of postal rules and regulations. Failing to understand these rules can actually cost the client or the printer significantly more money.

Print is very powerful in a complimentary fashion. If a client is combining print with another media, they may get more effectiveness than print by itself or the other media by itself. Those facts and figures are available through “Print in the Mix.” I would encourage anyone who is selling a company’s products to understand what their customers think and what their needs are, and their customers’ needs are return on investment. That’s really what it comes down to. Being armed with those facts and figures is very significant.

Sidebar: Resources Reps Can Use

“Why Print” Brochure
The Print Council produced a 24-page marketing brochure demonstrating the value and effectiveness of print communications. Entitled “Why Print? The Top Ten Ways Print Helps You Prosper,” the full-color brochure is the first in a series of materials The Print Council is making available to printers to influence media decision makers’ appreciation of the value of print. Printers are encouraged to download and use any or all of the materials provided in their own marketing materials to underscore the power of print communications. For more information, go to theprintcouncil.org/whyPrint.htm

Print in the Mix
Print in the Mix: A Clearinghouse of Research on Print Media Effectiveness, is designed to collect and summarize research on the effectiveness of print advertising and marketing – a site demonstrating the role of print as a viable information medium in the marketing mix.
For more information, go to printinthemix.rit.edu