Are you ready for International Print Day? Started for the first time last year, this International Print Day aims to create a global 24-hour phenomenon in which social media highlights the creativity, importance, and power of print and paper. During the inaugural celebration last year, 8,683 Tweets were delivered to 23,023,968 timelines with 1,271 contributors. That’s a lot of print related information shared around the world! Deborah Corn, Intergalactic Ambassador to The Printerverse at PrintMediaCentr.com, is the driving force behind International Print Day. We chatted about this year’s efforts and what we hope printers will gain from participating in the movement.   PIA: We love this year’s theme for International Print Day. How did #PrintNow come about, and how do you think this idea relates to the current state of the industry? Deborah: Our 2015 theme was crowd sourced during our weekly #PrintChat and Jonathan McGrew (@JEMcGrew) submitted #PrintNOW. To me, #PrintNOW embodies the current state of the industry and all of the amazing advances to marketing and communication we are creating and implementing. Equally, #PrintNOW can be used as a call to action. Luckily the chatters agreed and, voilà, our theme was born! PIA: A strong call to action is definitely important in a movement such as this. International Print Day intertwines a lot with social media. How important is it for printers to embrace social media marketing in their business plans? Deborah: Communication professionals must understand how to communicate with customers and prospects how and where they want to communicate. I am Gen-X, so maybe I will have some tolerance when I visit a printer’s site that doesn’t use social, but I am thinking “old;” I am thinking “not up on technology;” and I am thinking “how can they help me with my marketing when they don’t embrace some major channels on the multi-channel highway?” PIA: Definitely. Anyone in any industry should always be thinking about where their audience is and how they can best reach them. Besides getting involved in an awesome social media campaign, what are some other advantages for those who get in on the #PrintNow fun? Deborah: Creating Connection. #IPD15 is an opportunity for everyone to tell the world what they do, connect and engage with the community on a global scale, grow their audience and create thought leadership on subjects that are relevant to customers, prospects and #PrintNOW. There are long-term benefits of reach and awareness for a few hours of effort (and fun!) helping print trend the planet on October 14th. PIA: It sounds like there are lots of great benefits to joining the International Print Day movement. So, what’s your favorite part? Deborah: Creating Community. We all live in bubbles. Sometimes...

Are you ready for International Print Day? Started for the first time last year, this International Print Day aims to create a global 24-hour phenomenon in which social media highlights the creativity, importance, and power of print and paper. During the inaugural celebration last year, 8,683 Tweets were delivered to 23,023,968 timelines with 1,271 contributors. That’s a lot of print related information shared around the world! Deborah Corn, Intergalactic Ambassador to The Printerverse at PrintMediaCentr.com, is the driving force behind International Print Day. We chatted about this year’s efforts and what we hope printers will gain from participating in the movement.   PIA: We love this year’s theme for International Print Day. How did #PrintNow come about, and how do you think this idea relates to the current state of the industry? Deborah: Our 2015 theme was crowd sourced during our weekly #PrintChat and Jonathan McGrew (@JEMcGrew) submitted #PrintNOW. To me, #PrintNOW embodies the current state of the industry and all of the amazing advances to marketing and communication we are creating and implementing. Equally, #PrintNOW can be used as a call to action. Luckily the chatters agreed and, voilà, our theme was born! PIA: A strong call to action is definitely important in a movement such as this. International Print Day intertwines a lot with social media. How important is it for printers to embrace social media marketing in their business plans? Deborah: Communication professionals must understand how to communicate with customers and prospects how and where they want to communicate. I am Gen-X, so maybe I will have some tolerance when I visit a printer’s site that doesn’t use social, but I am thinking “old;” I am thinking “not up on technology;” and I am thinking “how can they help me with my marketing when they don’t embrace some major channels on the multi-channel highway?” PIA: Definitely. Anyone in any industry should always be thinking about where their audience is and how they can best reach them. Besides getting involved in an awesome social media campaign, what are some other advantages for those who get in on the #PrintNow fun? Deborah: Creating Connection. #IPD15 is an opportunity for everyone to tell the world what they do, connect and engage with the community on a global scale, grow their audience and create thought leadership on subjects that are relevant to customers, prospects and #PrintNOW. There are long-term benefits of reach and awareness for a few hours of effort (and fun!) helping print trend the planet on October 14th. PIA: It sounds like there are lots of great benefits to joining the International Print Day movement. So, what’s your favorite part? Deborah: Creating Community. We all live in bubbles. Sometimes...

From the Super Bowl to the super market, bluemedia and its president, Jared Smith, cover it all. And we also mean that literally—they also produce and install wraps on buildings, race cars, and fleet vehicles The next project Jared will cover is Color 2015, December 5–8 in Phoenix, AZ. We caught up with him to talk about his session and find out just how bluemedia has earned its place as one of the top printers for Super Bowl L. (Any chance you can score us some tickets, Jared?)   PIA: You work with some big-name clients, like the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, Coke, ESPN, NASCAR and NHRA to name a few… What are the top challenges you’ve faced in delivering their products? JS: We’ve learned that our job can have no plan B. We must be proactively prepared—ridiculously prepared—to get the job right the first time. When we are working on a building wrap, the scene might include police, road closures, rented lights, swing stages, and harnesses. When it takes 30 minutes to raise the swing stage platform up to the top of the building, this is not the time to find out you have a missing tile, a bad print, or a color issue. We have a purpose-built QC center at bluemedia that must take steps similar to when NASA heads up to the moon. We can’t forget anything—the cost for all would just be way too high. Our customers don’t come to buy bluemedia to buy signs and printing. They engage bluemedia to execute projects and events that make use of our massive in-house capabilities. For those clients with those types of needs, bluemedia is a great source. PIA: Working with a variety of markets, including sports, big box retail, and agencies, how does your company ensure brand accuracy from end to end? Brand accuracy for us starts by taking steps to ensure we understand the brand first. This means we ask for style guides, branding guidelines, messaging rules, and Pantone colors very early in the process. We go a step further to research the brand and look at specific examples of how the brand is positioned currently. This gives us a great jump start on increasing the probability that our proposed solutions align with the brand right away. The next main focus in brand accuracy after design is color. We don’t tweak color per job. We tweak the entire color environment from monitors, to color space on design computers, to proofing devices, to lighting, to measuring equipment to the final press and the media profiles used. Our strategy is to have a neutral environment that always produces an accurate output of any digital file. PIA: What...

From the Super Bowl to the super market, bluemedia and its president, Jared Smith, cover it all. And we also mean that literally—they also produce and install wraps on buildings, race cars, and fleet vehicles The next project Jared will cover is Color 2015, December 5–8 in Phoenix, AZ. We caught up with him to talk about his session and find out just how bluemedia has earned its place as one of the top printers for Super Bowl L. (Any chance you can score us some tickets, Jared?)   PIA: You work with some big-name clients, like the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, Coke, ESPN, NASCAR and NHRA to name a few… What are the top challenges you’ve faced in delivering their products? JS: We’ve learned that our job can have no plan B. We must be proactively prepared—ridiculously prepared—to get the job right the first time. When we are working on a building wrap, the scene might include police, road closures, rented lights, swing stages, and harnesses. When it takes 30 minutes to raise the swing stage platform up to the top of the building, this is not the time to find out you have a missing tile, a bad print, or a color issue. We have a purpose-built QC center at bluemedia that must take steps similar to when NASA heads up to the moon. We can’t forget anything—the cost for all would just be way too high. Our customers don’t come to buy bluemedia to buy signs and printing. They engage bluemedia to execute projects and events that make use of our massive in-house capabilities. For those clients with those types of needs, bluemedia is a great source. PIA: Working with a variety of markets, including sports, big box retail, and agencies, how does your company ensure brand accuracy from end to end? Brand accuracy for us starts by taking steps to ensure we understand the brand first. This means we ask for style guides, branding guidelines, messaging rules, and Pantone colors very early in the process. We go a step further to research the brand and look at specific examples of how the brand is positioned currently. This gives us a great jump start on increasing the probability that our proposed solutions align with the brand right away. The next main focus in brand accuracy after design is color. We don’t tweak color per job. We tweak the entire color environment from monitors, to color space on design computers, to proofing devices, to lighting, to measuring equipment to the final press and the media profiles used. Our strategy is to have a neutral environment that always produces an accurate output of any digital file. PIA: What...

Life moves fast. Who has time for print? One new campaign is suggesting we all do—even if we aren’t aware of it. Paper and packaging has been in competition with other media forms for quite some time now. Within our industry we know that printed paper and packaging products are viable and sustainable. But the real problem is convincing our customers of that. It comes down to general perceptions. Kids, instead of coloring in a coloring book, would rather play video games on tablets. Sports fans would rather download a virtual game ticket. Vacationers would rather take their e-book to the beach. But what if we could change these perceptions? What if we could show people that print and packaging products are actually a significant part of their daily lives? Last week we posted about what effects the “Paper and Packaging—How Life UnfoldsTM” campaign may have on our industry. Marketing and advertising agency Cramer-Krasselt is helping us fight back. They created this targeted campaign to give us, as Mary Anne Hansan, executive director of the Paper and Packaging Board, told the Washington Post, “a voice in an increasingly competitive world.” Here thought leaders from Cramer-Krasselt discuss how they developed the engaging stories that speak to the core of the industry’s most pivotal consumers. PIA: Where did the inspiration for the “Paper and Packaging—How Life UnfoldsTM” campaign come from? We wanted to try to connect with consumers in engaging and emotional ways, so we focused on storytelling. At first we thought we’d create some compelling stories and then add in some paper and packaging. But what we actually found was that every story we wrote already had paper and packaging in them. That’s when we had this epiphany that paper and packaging are like actual characters in our lives’ greatest stories. The letters, the boxes, the tickets, the photos, the books. These are all the things that allow us to grow and learn and connect. In essence, paper and packaging is how life unfolds. Todd Stone, Vice President, Group Creative Director, Cramer-Krasselt   PIA: What is the key message about paper and packaging products? Paper and paper packaging is relevant and valuable to our daily lives, helping us achieve and accomplish important things—achievements both large and small. It does that by enabling us to work productively, interact thoughtfully, build stronger connections, solve problems creatively, learn more effectively, and live sustainably. Jamie Schmelzer, Vice President, Group Account Director, Cramer-Krasselt   PIA: What type of consumer does this campaign target? Our target for this campaign is a group of consumers we’re calling The Expressives—Educated adults 18–49. Most are working. Half are married with kids. They’re big fans of paper and paper-packaging, even...