There but by the grace of Prosper go us. Is the Tribune's purchase of a Kodak Prosper press a breakthrough? You can watch the video from Graph Expo 2010.
Go to http://www.kzonelive.com/10-4.html
Here's Lou Taziola, president, Tribune Direct: “The justification for Prosper was based on Tribune Direct, but we are owned by one of the largest newspaper companies in the country, and another opportunity we see for Prosper would be on short run, niche publications.”
What is Tribune Direct? A national full-service, direct mail marketing company – headquartered in Chicago, with locations in five markets around the country, owned by Tribune Company.
Here's Tim Klunder, Vice President of Sales and Client Relations, Tribune Direct: “Variable data publishing helps us drive personalization that can integrate electronic media with the paper-based publications which we are seeing increase exponentially today. How do those two mediums interact with each other? The conversation focuses around ‘How can we harness the power of our data to actually drive personalization . . . make a reality of ink on paper.”
Taziola explains that current Tribune Direct does shared mail to 3.5 million homes on Wednesday and 2 million on Saturday, basically pre-print fliers for the Chicago Tribune non-subscribers. That's 60 million pieces of advertisement each week
And in solo mail about 25 million pieces a month in Chicago, nationally double that – postcards, self-mailers, letters, etc.
Klunder again: “Customers today have a need to talk in a personalized fashion with their clients. A few short years ago they may not have had the data to support that, today, they have been making investments in data capabilities, so they have those capabilities today.
“The variable data volumes we push through every month continue to increase exponentially. . . Digital is a great way for us to serve our clients’ needs. Prosper allows us to run long run, highly personalized, high quality at a cost effective price that’s really unprecedented in the print industry today.”
Taziola calls the Prosper press "A game changer for the industry". Taziola praises the press' speed and quality and variability.
Showing posts with label Personalization; variable data printing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Personalization; variable data printing. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Prospering in Chicago
I've had several requests from blog readers to follow up with more details about the Chicago Tribune Direct's purchase of a Kodak Proper press for direct mail and potential niche publications use (see blog entry "Flatfooted No More" Sept.29, 2010).
Following up with Tim Street (director of Tribune Direct Marketing), here are a few more details about their plans.
Although they have purchased the Kodak Prosper 1000 they expect to have the 5000Xl in place hopefully by Q1 2011.
They have had a lot of success in the past few years with Kodak presses in their direct mail business, which has grown 100 percent, although they have visited with and analyzed many of the other digital presses available on the market.
Now they want to follow their recent success into new opportunities for their customers, including the ability to print on multiple substrates and go as quickly as possible, in the 650 feet per minute range. (Tribune Direct is strictly a digital printing company with no offset presses.)
When asked about reference to potential "niche" publications, Street deferred to Paul Lynch (senior manager/quality/commercial printing, Chicago Tribune) as someone who is more focussed on such solutions, but Street posited that possibly Tribune Direct:
1. Could use the Prosper pressed to print publications with tiered advertising directed at different audiences.
Or
2. Could, for instance, print publications for attendees at events at McCormick Place with targeted offers for the attendees such as local restaurants.
Speaking of events at the McCormick Place, Tim pointed out that during Graph Expo 2010, starting on Sunday, the Kzone will live stream discussions of the Tribune developments including from 10:30-11 a.m. Central Time on Monday, Oct. 4 this program, called "Owning the Competition with Digital Print":
The gloves are off. And Tribune Direct is taking it to the competition with the Kodak Prosper Press platform. How? By bringing new, exciting direct mail capabilities to its customers nationwide. Learn how the revolutionary combination of quality and variability at the speed of offset is helping Tribune Direct knock out the competition.
Moderator
Dave Zwang, Zwang & Co.
Panelists:
• Lou Tazioli, President, Tribune Direct • Tim Klunder, Vice President of Sales and Client
Relations, Tribune Direct • Ronen Cohen, Kodak
Visit http://www.Kzonelive.com for the discussions.
Following up with Tim Street (director of Tribune Direct Marketing), here are a few more details about their plans.
Although they have purchased the Kodak Prosper 1000 they expect to have the 5000Xl in place hopefully by Q1 2011.
They have had a lot of success in the past few years with Kodak presses in their direct mail business, which has grown 100 percent, although they have visited with and analyzed many of the other digital presses available on the market.
Now they want to follow their recent success into new opportunities for their customers, including the ability to print on multiple substrates and go as quickly as possible, in the 650 feet per minute range. (Tribune Direct is strictly a digital printing company with no offset presses.)
When asked about reference to potential "niche" publications, Street deferred to Paul Lynch (senior manager/quality/commercial printing, Chicago Tribune) as someone who is more focussed on such solutions, but Street posited that possibly Tribune Direct:
1. Could use the Prosper pressed to print publications with tiered advertising directed at different audiences.
Or
2. Could, for instance, print publications for attendees at events at McCormick Place with targeted offers for the attendees such as local restaurants.
Speaking of events at the McCormick Place, Tim pointed out that during Graph Expo 2010, starting on Sunday, the Kzone will live stream discussions of the Tribune developments including from 10:30-11 a.m. Central Time on Monday, Oct. 4 this program, called "Owning the Competition with Digital Print":
The gloves are off. And Tribune Direct is taking it to the competition with the Kodak Prosper Press platform. How? By bringing new, exciting direct mail capabilities to its customers nationwide. Learn how the revolutionary combination of quality and variability at the speed of offset is helping Tribune Direct knock out the competition.
Moderator
Dave Zwang, Zwang & Co.
Panelists:
• Lou Tazioli, President, Tribune Direct • Tim Klunder, Vice President of Sales and Client
Relations, Tribune Direct • Ronen Cohen, Kodak
Visit http://www.Kzonelive.com for the discussions.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Just on a smile
It's hard to get by just on a smile. The tipping point for analog print newspapers (to change to digital, variable data print) may never come according to PRIMIR. Projections are wonderful. But what about people, I ask?
Books are here, thank God, which means the digital presses will continue to come, even with a frown.
Check it out: http://www.piworld.com/article/primir-study-identifies-tipping-points-digital-printing-applications-2014/1
Since 1993 when Indigo first introduced their digital press, the printing industry has debated the merits of the technology, which markets it would best serve, which applications would eventually go all digital, and when we would see the demise of conventional printing as we know it. Here it is 17 years later and the sky still hasn’t fallen in—at least not due to this new technology. So PRIMIR members asked the folks at IT Strategies to investigate this marketplace and provide some insights into why the much anticipated tipping point hasn’t occurred, when it might, and where opportunities exist today.
The key objective of the "PRIMIR Megatrends in Digital Printing Applications" study was straightforward: evaluate major print applications and determine which (if any) will migrate from analog to digital production printing, when and why?
Over the course of eight months, IT Strategies conducted extensive research with experts, printers and customers via e-mail surveys and personal interviews—in all, over 900 respondents. The study focused on 12 applications: books, catalogs, direct mail, labels, magazines, manuals, marketing collateral, newspapers, packaging (folding cartons & flexible), and specialty printing such as calendars, photo books, etc.). The research was limited exclusively to production printing, excluding any equipment under $50,000 in acquisition cost akin to desktop printers and copier/MFP devices. Using equivalent letter-size simplex impressions/pages as the lowest common denominator, this study quantifies the page volume and rate of transition from analog to digital production printing for each application.
Tipping point = unstoppable momentum.
A surprise finding of the research: few of the studied 12 applications will tip within the time period of the study (by 2014), some have momentum to possibly tip by 2020 or later, but the tipping point for most of the applications is decades away, if at all.
However, digital printing has made some serious inroads in the non-publishing related applications, especially where there is opportunity to add value through complex variable-data content. Book printing, however, is the one publishing application that has embraced digital printing and will continue to see positive growth.
According to Marco Boer, vice president, IT Strategies, and principal researcher on this study, “A more important finding is that the analog production page volume is shrinking independent of digital production print volume growth. In fact, while digital production printing in North America is forecast for a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.5% thru 2014, it is from a very small overall volume base (22 billion in 2009 to 33 billion pages in 2014). Despite the relatively small volume, the value of those North American pages, including valueadded services is much higher than analog. Analog printing will see a negative CAGR (-5%) for the same period. Digital production printing would have to grow about 200% per year to even approach an overall market tipping point.”
And, although not a focus of this particular study, let’s not forget that many digital pages are bypassing digital production print entirely and shifting to decentralized selfprint in the office in very short runs using copier/MFP or desktop printers.
Digital printing is a very attractive offering for print service providers from a revenue and profit perspective especially in niche applications where the value of the pages is much higher. The research reconfirmed the fact that digital production print thrives with smaller run length, complex (variable data), rapid response jobs. In 2009 in North America those jobs represented 1.5% of production print volume (if one excludes newspaper, catalog, and magazines digital production print it represents a 7% share). (Figure 2)
As production run length per job continues to decrease, digital production print eligible share of jobs will grow proportionally. Figure 3 identifies the CAGR for the applications specifically covered in the study. Established applications for digital printing have lower projected growth rates, while those that are not established may have significant potential and high growth rates. Still, these growth applications currently represent relatively limited volumes. The report also identifies conditions under which digital printing adoption could accelerate even in the high analog volume segments such as magazines and catalogs. Despite that, the threat to analog is not digital printing.
The true threat to analog is habit change and pages migrating to electronic displays/readers. A point in fact from the research—print specifiers reported that investment for design and marketing for electronic display is nearly equal for most production applications to investment in production print.
Opportunity abounds formanufacturers serving both analog and digital print markets. The published report will detail threats and opportunities, as well as provide a thorough analysis of findings from both the printer and specifier for each of the 12 applications. The report will be published in mid-fall and available to both NPES and PRIMIR members.
Books are here, thank God, which means the digital presses will continue to come, even with a frown.
Check it out: http://www.piworld.com/article/primir-study-identifies-tipping-points-digital-printing-applications-2014/1
Since 1993 when Indigo first introduced their digital press, the printing industry has debated the merits of the technology, which markets it would best serve, which applications would eventually go all digital, and when we would see the demise of conventional printing as we know it. Here it is 17 years later and the sky still hasn’t fallen in—at least not due to this new technology. So PRIMIR members asked the folks at IT Strategies to investigate this marketplace and provide some insights into why the much anticipated tipping point hasn’t occurred, when it might, and where opportunities exist today.
The key objective of the "PRIMIR Megatrends in Digital Printing Applications" study was straightforward: evaluate major print applications and determine which (if any) will migrate from analog to digital production printing, when and why?
Over the course of eight months, IT Strategies conducted extensive research with experts, printers and customers via e-mail surveys and personal interviews—in all, over 900 respondents. The study focused on 12 applications: books, catalogs, direct mail, labels, magazines, manuals, marketing collateral, newspapers, packaging (folding cartons & flexible), and specialty printing such as calendars, photo books, etc.). The research was limited exclusively to production printing, excluding any equipment under $50,000 in acquisition cost akin to desktop printers and copier/MFP devices. Using equivalent letter-size simplex impressions/pages as the lowest common denominator, this study quantifies the page volume and rate of transition from analog to digital production printing for each application.
Tipping point = unstoppable momentum.
A surprise finding of the research: few of the studied 12 applications will tip within the time period of the study (by 2014), some have momentum to possibly tip by 2020 or later, but the tipping point for most of the applications is decades away, if at all.
However, digital printing has made some serious inroads in the non-publishing related applications, especially where there is opportunity to add value through complex variable-data content. Book printing, however, is the one publishing application that has embraced digital printing and will continue to see positive growth.
According to Marco Boer, vice president, IT Strategies, and principal researcher on this study, “A more important finding is that the analog production page volume is shrinking independent of digital production print volume growth. In fact, while digital production printing in North America is forecast for a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.5% thru 2014, it is from a very small overall volume base (22 billion in 2009 to 33 billion pages in 2014). Despite the relatively small volume, the value of those North American pages, including valueadded services is much higher than analog. Analog printing will see a negative CAGR (-5%) for the same period. Digital production printing would have to grow about 200% per year to even approach an overall market tipping point.”
And, although not a focus of this particular study, let’s not forget that many digital pages are bypassing digital production print entirely and shifting to decentralized selfprint in the office in very short runs using copier/MFP or desktop printers.
Digital printing is a very attractive offering for print service providers from a revenue and profit perspective especially in niche applications where the value of the pages is much higher. The research reconfirmed the fact that digital production print thrives with smaller run length, complex (variable data), rapid response jobs. In 2009 in North America those jobs represented 1.5% of production print volume (if one excludes newspaper, catalog, and magazines digital production print it represents a 7% share). (Figure 2)
As production run length per job continues to decrease, digital production print eligible share of jobs will grow proportionally. Figure 3 identifies the CAGR for the applications specifically covered in the study. Established applications for digital printing have lower projected growth rates, while those that are not established may have significant potential and high growth rates. Still, these growth applications currently represent relatively limited volumes. The report also identifies conditions under which digital printing adoption could accelerate even in the high analog volume segments such as magazines and catalogs. Despite that, the threat to analog is not digital printing.
The true threat to analog is habit change and pages migrating to electronic displays/readers. A point in fact from the research—print specifiers reported that investment for design and marketing for electronic display is nearly equal for most production applications to investment in production print.
Opportunity abounds formanufacturers serving both analog and digital print markets. The published report will detail threats and opportunities, as well as provide a thorough analysis of findings from both the printer and specifier for each of the 12 applications. The report will be published in mid-fall and available to both NPES and PRIMIR members.
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