Print Council Poised to Execute

By Cary Sherburne, Senior WTT Editor

November 23, 2004 -- On November 15th, 2004, Martin J. Maloney, Chairman, Broadford & Maloney Inc., was appointed to the position of executive director of The Print Council. Reporting to the Council’s executive committee, Maloney will spearhead membership, manage marketing and administration of the Council, as well as oversee education, research, and fundraising programs. The Print Council, launched at Graph Expo 2003, is a business development alliance founded by leaders in the graphic arts industry whose goal is to influence and promote the greater use of print. WhatTheyThink caught up with Maloney to get an update on the Print Council and Maloney’s plans for the future.

WTT: Marty, thanks for taking the time to speak with us today, and congratulations on your new role. How many members does the Print Council have at this point?

MM: There are 74 individuals that are part of the Print Council, representing 30 organizations made up of suppliers and printers. In addition, we have other categories of membership, including industry associations and media partners like WhatTheyThink. Other organizations involved with the initiative include NAK Marketing and Communications, Leo Burnett Works, and the United States Postal Service, and my firm, Broadford & Maloney.

WTT: What does it cost to join?

MM: When the organization was founded, we initially approached larger printing firms and suppliers to the industry who joined for an annual fee of $25,000. Associations and media partners don’t pay any annual fees. And there are other parties that provide services pro bono in exchange for membership, such as NAK. Recently, we have seen a lot of interest from printing companies in the $10 million range who are passionate about the industry and the cause and want to be part of it. We realize that $25,000 may be a little steep for them. We have a meeting of the Council coming up on December 8th, and one of the agenda items will be membership structure. We would like to look at establishing other levels of membership that would be more attractive to smaller printers, as well as looking at the other end of the scale with a different structure for very large organizations.

WTT: At Graph Expo 2004, the Council announced that it had appointed Xerox’s Gina Testa as the marketing chairperson. What is her role?

MM: We are very lucky to have someone with Gina’s talent in that role. She will be responsible for overseeing all of our marketing efforts, and working with the Marketing Committee. She manages PR and the print advertising campaign we are developing with NAK, as well as any direct marketing efforts we might undertake. The Marketing Committee is a good representation of the membership. There are a variety of individuals on the committee, not necessarily company presidents, but more often marketing professionals. This gives us the opportunity to call on the skills of our membership in that specific area, marketing.

WTT: What about the Executive Committee? Will its role change with your appointment?

MM: The Executive Committees is comprised of President and CEO level individuals that initially provided governance and strategic direction for the Print Council. Now I will report to that Executive Committee, and they will act more like a board of directors, with more of a guidance role.

WTT: In addition to developing strategic direction for the Council, what other responsibilities will you have?

MM: One of my responsibilities is to expand our membership. Eventually, I would like to put a membership committee in place to help identify and sign up prospects.

WTT: Who will you be looking at as potential members?

MM: We will be expanding the membership beyond the printers and suppliers and trade publishers that are involved with the Council now. We will go after the larger consumer publishers like Business Week, Time, Inc., and Newsweek, as well as the creative community, ad agencies, and direct mail agencies. Attacking this issue is not as simple as being a printer or a supplier. Certainly, one of the audiences that stands to gain a lot of benefits are the magazine companies and catalogers. We will take a multifaceted approach.

WTT: Do you see other committees being formed?

MM:I also think there could be room for a financial committee as our membership grows and we do more things. I believe the financial responsibilities should rest on more shoulders than a single person. But keep in mind that this is Week One for me, and just finishing Year One for the Council. A lot has already been done, and now with more people in place and the specifics laid out, we will go beyond mission statements and begin work on bylaws and fleshing the whole thing out. That will bring more committees and more membership involvement.

WTT: What are the specific initiatives in place to educate specifiers about new print technologies and the position of print in the overall media mix?

MM: Again, I think we are a little early on that. A lot of those initiatives will be discussed at our upcoming meeting on December 8th. I would love to speak with you again in 100 days. We have a lot of proposals in place, and we will be discussing them and pulling the trigger on a lot of things starting with that December 8th meeting.

WTT: Is the Council U.S. centric at this time?

MM: There has been some interest from Canada, so it could probably be called a North American initiative, but beyond that, it is not international at this time.

WTT: What is entailed in the alliance with the USPS?

MM: That is an initiative that was discussed at Graph Expo and discussed in our Graph Expo press release. About nine months ago, we had a meeting in Washington D.C., and through the PIA, we brought in some representatives from USPS who presented some of their research to us. At that meeting, we unanimously agreed there was strong synergy between the groups, given that close to half of all printing in the U.S. ends up in the U.S. mail stream, and that everything that goes through the mail stream—90 billion pieces a year—is printed in some way. The USPS is very interested in our cause. They would like to see more print generated and inserted into the mail stream, of course. And they are an outstanding source of research, and have been involved in other initiatives as well. We are calling it an alliance, not a formal partnership. But they do attend every single meeting, they share research with us, and we have spoken at their meetings as well, including the National Postal Forum.

WTT: So do you see an increase in mail volumes as being a primary objective of the Council?

MM: It is another way of building demand for printed goods, but certainly not the only way. We are going to use every possible avenue and portal for the distribution of mail to reach this higher awareness of the value of printed goods. Remember that we are not really talking about a printing process or manufacturing process, but rather print as a medium. This includes direct marketing, magazines, newspapers, books, and the traditional fare of the commercial printer, advertising printing, whether it gets mailed or not.

WTT: I hear some industry pundits talk about how the Print Council is partnering with the USPS and that that is a recipe for failure since rising postal rates are one of the issues that are most impacting the overall cost of print.

MM: You have to choose your partners and choose how you use those partners. It doesn’t mean we agree with higher postal rates. But the USPS has been very cooperative, and they are one of the beneficiaries as well. We will use everyone wisely. This is not a USPS centric organization. That is not our only effort—it is only one of many. The membership of the council also includes suppliers and printers. Generally, it is a neutral forum where we don’t raise individual business issues. For example, you wouldn’t have someone like Cenveo accosting a press manufacturer over the cost of presses or discussing rising costs of paper. We try to put those issues aside at the Print Council. Our common goal is to increase the awareness and use of print.

WTT: What do you think the overall impact of the next postal increase will be on the industry?

MM: There has been some research and opinion that points to the fact that despite the cost of postage and the demand for faster electronic delivery of information via e-mail and the Web, people prefer print, and U.S. consumer or business postal customers have a special relationship with their mailboxes. The USPS did a study on how consumers interact with mail, and they developed a concept called The Mail Moment. When the mail arrives, things happen in the household. What is your emotional feeling when you see your email box fill up with SPAM? Do you hurry to open them all, do you run to your computer? No. But when the mail comes, there is a different set of things that happen that are quite positive. So we think it will continue to be an important part of the initiative.

Also, we are not going to be selling against other media. We are not going to be saying that broadcast and electronic communications are no good. We are going to be presenting print on a standalone basis for what it is, talk about its value proposition and benefits—whether it is mail moments or tactile feel or portability. With this positive approach, we know we can get support from the multimedia community, like Time Warner which owns AOL. Print is a choice and an option. In today’s world, that is the only way we can go out and have an inclusive membership.

WTT: One of the biggest issues, in my opinion, that we have as an industry is that we have not done a good job of building ROI models for print-based campaigns and for the cost of print in general. With e-mail campaigns, you can get nearly instant results and that is increasingly important to marketing professionals who have to justify their budgets in times where there is increased focus on cost containment. What are you doing in that regard?

MM: Well, of course, the DMA has a lot of data about the ROI for direct mail. Broadening that type of data to include a broader category of print could certainly be an undertaking in the research area, the results of which we could use in a publicity sense. It is a good possibility as we have these discussions over the next few weeks that we will decide to build those models.

WTT: The press release referenced a business-to-business advertising campaign targeted at media specifiers, provided pro-bono by NAK Marketing and Communications. What is the status of that?

MM: It is still a work in process. We have three strong concepts now that are based on exactly what we have been talking about here—non-competitive with other media, and talking about how e-commerce companies—by adding paper catalogs to their media mix—can see a jump in orders. One tagline we have trademarked is Just Add Print. Another is Print, the Multi-medium. But it will be research oriented, describing how a marketer can add print to the media mix and achieve higher returns and response rates. We will initially be targeting industry publications through media partnerships, including the non-graphic arts books they have in their networks. We are certainly talking about going into consumer and business magazines as well. We have to figure out a way to pay for it, and if our membership goals and segmentation targets for membership are reached, I have a feeling we will have that solved as well. Perhaps some organizations will even donate ad pages as part of their membership. It is a funny audience that we are trying to reach. I have been studying it for my entire career, and the titles keep changing. Ad agencies used to have media buyers buying pages in publications. That was pretty easy to figure out. These days, those people are still there and they still execute, but they are no longer necessarily the people that make the decisions about the media mix. That’s often done by media planners and account planners, and many of these people may not be totally familiar with all of the benefits of print. We want to be the umbrella group that gives these people an education about the value of print.

WTT: As executive director, what are your top three priorities between now and Print 05?

MM: First, to broaden the membership, which will also help me keep the job. Second, to be able to measurably say that the awareness and use of print has been improved. We will be discussing what measurement devices can be used. There are a lot of options.

And while membership and fundraising are often one and the same, and raising the awareness is the overall mission, I want to be an evangelist for print as well as a strategic planner. I see this as an extension of the passion I have always had for print, and now I will have the opportunity to do it on a wider scale and with a wider audience. If I can do that, I will think I have been successful. And I have a lot of help. I think we have all of the pieces in place to ensure success. And I have the access to CEOs and the contacts. Believe it or not, we have had people calling us in the last couple of weeks, major companies, asking how they can get involved. We are already getting a very positive reaction.

WTT: Marty, thanks again for your time today. We will look forward to seeing what unfolds in the next 100 days.

For more information, visit www.npes.org/printcouncil.html

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This Interview was conducted by Cary Sherburne. She can be reached via email at cary@sherburneassociates.com, online at www.sherburneassociates.com and by telephone at 603-430-5463.

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