Despite competition from other media, print is thriving. It can serve as a mass medium, 1:1 marketing tool or part of a cross media campaign.

By Jeffrey Hayzlett

Look To New Markets

As marketing and communications professionals continue to discover new ways to capitalize on the effectiveness and popularity of print, the opportunities for print service providers to diversify and grow are tremendous. That means printers will expand their services to serve customers in adjacent markets.

The transition for printers from one segment to another will be made easier as technology continues to evolve in areas such as electrophotography. Advances in electrophotographic presses will create opportunities for production of transpromo communications, which historically has been an application of continuous ink-jet printing. Electrophotography is also an ideal application for business-building opportunities in photo books and short-run color book publishing. The technology makes variable data books, such as personalized children’s books, a cost-competitive and profitable reality.

At the same time, innovative technology enhancements in color, speed and quality have led to a range of new applications for ink-jet printing such as newspapers, packaging, book printing and tracking and tracing capabilities. Ink-jet printing will continue to expand into new markets and applications over the next year.

THE MEANS for companies to communicate with customers expand on an almost daily basis. The Internet, cell phones, movie theaters, kiosks and dozens of other outlets have joined print, radio and TV as popular methods of delivering ads and messages.

The market research firm Yankelovich quantifies the impact of the growing array of communication methods this way: consumers encounter between 3,500 and 5,000 marketing messages a day, or three to four times as many as in the 1970s.

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Companies:
Eastman Kodak Co.

Jeffrey Hayzlett Author's page Jeffrey Hayzlett is the chairman of the C-Suite Network, which provides networking opportunities for business executives with titles of VP and above from companies with annual revenues of $10 million or greater.

PRINT: The Growing Multi in Multimedia