Article prepared by C. Clint Bolte, C. Clint Bolte & Associates, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. For additional information please call 717-263-5768, fax 717-263-8945, or e-mail to clint@clintbolte.com.

Print Oasis 2007 Encourages Print Buyers to Consider Becoming Marketing High Rollers

The sixth annual print buyers conference sponsored by Print Buyers On Line was held in Las Vegas February 11-14. Its largest crowd yet at nearly 700 gathered to peer network, attend more than 33 seminars put on by industry luminaries, talk to the 67 exhibitors, and enjoy the balmy Nevada weather while a major snow storm hit the Midwest and East coast. A steady underlying theme of the conference was the encouragement of traditional print buyers to become more connected with their marketing customers.

Articles have been written about the gender shift among traditional print buyers and the strong ascendancy of females into these important professional jobs. The demographics of this Print Oasis 2007 showed a full 75% of attendees were female. And 70% of all attendees have had at least four years experience as print buyers and are each responsible for just under $2 million of procurement a year. To best accommodate the varied professional experience levels and the educational needs of the attendees Print Oasis offered three tracks; novice, advanced (for print buyers) and creative.

Swans among ducks, as the children's fairy tale describes, print buyers are trying to change and broaden the perception of their corporate roles. Traditionally they have been pigeonholed by many companies in purchasing and financial departments typically administering 2-3% of the total corporate revenues in various print and graphics procurement contracts. Increasingly print buyers are finding their key clients to be in marketing as designers and product managers, for example.

Leading practitioners are proving that they provide increasing value to their corporation if they can learn about graphics projects earlier in the creation process. Serving as undeclared, in house technical graphics consultants, these new millennium print buyers can help advise designers and marketers on product and service specifications that might save considerable money from print production through postal costs. John Coudriet, Nationwide Insurance Company's Director of Print & Equipment Sourcing, as a panel participant described his staff's initial time being 75+% tied to their desks performing administrative paper work tasks and 25% face to face with clients. With improved systems, software and shear management emphasis, his staff is aggressively reversing these percentages and becoming involved with clients earlier in their projects. This proactive rather than reactive initiative is allowing more lead-time to find specialty vendors and to help in structuring more cost effective graphic communications projects.

Corporate top management may shy away from assigning print buyers to report to the marketing department. This is due to the perceived tight relationships and dependencies occasionally developed between fast moving marketers and their loyal vendors who have the proven ability to execute changing orders quickly and more expensively. But the proof is surfacing that the in depth know how of a disciplined print procurement team can add flexibility to the overall voyage if they can learn about the iceberg before they here it piercing the Titanic hull. Mr. Coudriet concluded that his staff's goal is to spend two days a week in the design and marketing department participating in their planning sessions.

Print Buyers On Line is well beyond its embryonic stage with 11,000 members now responsible for print procurement budgets in excess of $13 billion a year. It will be interesting to observe how successful the organization and its growing number of print buyer services will be in helping its members ratchet themselves up and out of the purchasing mode and into the more valuable - for their corporation - graphic communications technical consultant and facilitator's role.

Keynote speaker Steve Lance was the co-author of the book, The Little Blue Book of Advertising - 52 Small Ideas That Can Make a Big Difference. Autographed copies of his book were distributed to conference attendees courtesy of keynote sponsor, Xerox Corporation. Mr. Lance described the "language disconnect" between creatives, marketers and print buyers. "That tension is one of the secrets to creating great advertising," opined Lance, "Particularly when a disciplined process is in place." The foundation for this process is a specific strategy document defining simply what is wanted to be achieved in measurable terms. It was refreshing to hear an advertising professional highlight that the creative process cannot be managed without being measured.

Lance's project strategy comes from a clear understanding of what the product or service offers in terms of features, advantages and benefits. And then realizing that the buying decision is always made in the reverse order; perceived benefits, advantages and finally features.

Among the 67 exhibitors were general commercial and specialty printers, digital print engine manufacturers, paper mills and specialty products. Five foreign based printers included two Canadian printers with long standing United States clients; Metropolitan Fine Printing out of Vancouver, British Columbia and Compuset Printing from Montreal, Quebec. Three others were print distributors representing a potpourri of different Chinese printers. These print distributors expect to be establishing American offices before too long. Two exhibitors; p3 Software and James Tower's Cross-Wind offered application specific software to facilitate and manage print procurement programs for corporations.

Three digital print engine manufacturers each gave presentations on the latest successful variable data digital printing case studies and key lessons learned. Jeff Hayzlett, Kodak's Chief Marketing Officer, emphasized the new marketing metric for measuring the success of direct marketing programs; "It's no longer the lowest cost per page but the cost per response." Xerox's Johnette Mongelli offered an operational tip vital in dealing with confidential data. "Have a sequence number printed in the lower right hand corner of each variable printed page so that finishing operators can quickly confirm what pages go in what package."

Since weight has been the primary postal cost determinate for magazines, publishers have traditionally traded off opacity for lighter weight stock. DuPont developed titanium technologies, which when added to substantially lighter weight stocks allow them to retain comparable opacity and often even higher brightness ratings than heavier stocks. Branded as RPS Vantage™ titanium dioxide, this ingredient when added to the lighter weight stock will cost about the same as the heavier stock previously being used but the savings in postage can be substantial. As a case study the DuPont Company printed its SEC Form 10-K and proxy statement for 650,000 stockholders on a 38# paper containing RPS Vantage™ instead of the normal 50# offset. DuPont Market Development Manager for this product, Micheal Evans remarked, "In addition to the $28,438 postage savings, 39 fewer tons of paper were required and 80 fewer tons of wood were harvested."

Nationwide's John Coudriet described his firm's highly disciplined procedures leading to their successful use of reverse auctions for select print procurements. Of the $130 million that his department buys ($80 million of commercial printing and $50 million of transactional printing), about $10 million was placed through reverse auctions. He attributes this success to his firm's "strong rules of engagement," which include (1) always award to the low bidder, (2) only pre-qualified vendors allowed to bid, (3) each vendor measured by quality and service, (4) each auction (there have been 1,500 in the first three years) intended to last 15 minutes, (5) any bid placed during the last minute will extend the stop time by two minutes to assure that no one is playing the game of throwing in a bid during the last few seconds, (6) no names of vendors appear anywhere during the auction (each bidder has a confidential code number), (7) reprint jobs only to be auctioned, (8) absolutely no creative work required for any of the jobs, (9) schedule delivery dates are firm and (10) sixteen highly standardized specification templates are used. Including Nationwide's expense for their Global Procure™ web auction software used and allocation for all staff time, the company feels that reverse auctions have saved the company about 10% overall versus traditional procurement methodologies. Mr. Coudriet feels that there has been only modest turnover among the pre-qualified vendors allowed to participate in their reverse auctions. While currently 16 printers are on this list only two have dropped off since the practice began, as they were not winning anything.

Membership in the two-year-old print buyers association, Print Communications Professionals International (pcpi.org), also created by Print Buyers On Line (printbuyersonline.com), continues to grow with membership at nearly 200. This group encouraged the initiation of a series of professional certification programs as a further means of encouraging and acknowledging professional career growth in the increasingly diverse, technical and dynamic graphic communications procurement field, i.e., print buying.

The first two certification programs are Professional Print Production and Digital & Variable Data Printing. The first certification is expected to be good for five years with the later only three years due to its rapidly changing technical nature. Study guides and testing procedures have been available for only a few months. And yet nineteen print buyers have past the exam and received the first certification while twelve have received the later designation to date. The 300 page long Print Production study guides may be purchased for $750 and the 186 page Variable Data study guide for $500. These prices include the tests and are discounted for PCPI members.

Suzanne Morgan, President & Founder of PBOL and PCPI, has been pleased with the market reception of the certification program. She said, "Intelligencer Printing, a long time Print Oasis exhibitor, has expressed interest in having their entire customer service and print sales team go through the certification process as well." If interest continues to grow she expects additional certification programs of a more specialty nature to be developed and included in the total offering. These topics might include color management, paper, sales representative as well as an advanced print production certification.

While this conference continues to draw a significant number of "first timers," conversations during the breaks clearly indicate that a growing number of attendees have become loyal veterans. As specialty softwares and procedures help these professionals to increase their administrative procurement efficiencies, this conference seems to be attempting to empower attendees to seek out additional responsibilities and increase the profile of the services that they can offer their companies. If they could convince their bosses to come and hear this future vision, there is no telling how much more quickly it might be realized.

Article prepared by C. Clint Bolte, C. Clint Bolte & Associates, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. For additional information please call 717-263-5768, fax 717-263-8945, or e-mail to clint@clintbolte.com.