How I Won CEO of the Year
by Andrew Shedden
Some years ago I received a facsimile copy of the Financial Post in the mail. What made this particular copy of great interest to me was the fact that the cover had a very attractive headline. The headline stated Andrew Shedden wins CEO of the Year.
There were appropriate subheadings in the subsequent article where I stated that a good deal of my obvious brilliance and financial acumen could be attributed to my reading the Financial Post magazine. This was news to me, as I had never read the Financial Post.
To say I had a field day with this would be a gross understatement. I must have shown dozens of people this most public acknowledgement. I can’t tell you how long I had that newspaper sticking around - but it was a long time indeed – and yes, I did subscribe.
The evolution of printing
While the Internet is taking a big bite of the marketing communications market printing still owns a position of prominence. One advantage of printing over the Web is its portable and tactile nature. Another continuing advantage of printed marketing communications versus the Web is the wider availability of highly targeted mailing lists.
The single biggest disadvantage in purchasing printing is the end result of economy of scale. Simply put, the bulk of time spent on many printing jobs is setting up the press. Once your printing job is set up and the press is running there is no great difference in price between 1,000 and 2,000 copies. This means to drive your per unit costs down you need to increase the quantity of your print run.
But what if you don’t need 2,000 copies?
The solution is to run your printing job on a digital press where you can order as little as a single copy. Digital presses allow companies to effectively print small quantities of full colour sales materials. In fact, the output quality of the new digital presses is rapidly approaching that of conventional presses.
So what is variable printing?
The concept of variable printing takes a good idea (digital printing) and makes it a great one. Basically, you take a database of names and merge them with your printing files on a digital press to create completely personalized short run full colour printing.
My “copy” of the Financial Post was an early example of variable printing. This “mass customization” is an extremely powerful marketing tool, as the printed pieces tend to be more memorable and stick around a lot longer. When highly targeted mailing lists are combined with variable printing the results can be absolutely incredible.
For example, let’s say you’re utilizing post cards for a lead generation campaign. The headline on the front of the post card can be easily customized for every company on your prospecting list. Instead of saying “Save Money on Floppy Disks” your headline could read “Acme Company Breaks Q3 Record. President John Smith attributes surging profits to buying Floppy Disks from Floppyco.”
What are the drawbacks?
Digital printing is expensive and usually not suitable for runs of over 1,000, as you will probably pay $1 to $1.50 per piece. The other consideration is the quality of digital printing doesn’t (yet) match the quality of conventional offset printing. While digital printing is more than adequate for most uses if you are seeking ultra high quality in your printing job there’s still no substitute for a highly skilled offset press operator.
