Mimeo Lounge

On Demand Conference & Exposition - Highlights

Posted on March 5, 2008 at 11:08am, written by Jeff Grill, VP Marketing

The On Demand Conference and Exposition (March 3 - 6 2008 in Boston) has been my home for the last several days. 

It’s striking how the printing industry is undergoing dramatic change with the transition from traditional offset printing to digital.  For those not intimately familiar with offset vs. digital, offset presses produce large quantities of printed materials at relatively low cost.  It requires long lead times and standardization of message.  Think about 1 million plus direct mail pieces or a magazine printing program.  The push to digital short run on demand printing technology like Mimeo.com which allows for highly customized printing, is accelerating with the ability to customize documents on the desktop, the rise of one to one communications, advances in digital printing technology and environmental pressure to reduce waste that comes from printed pieces that are never used due to obsolescence or poor quantity estimates.  One industry leader indicated that within the next 10 years, 50% of offset presses will not be in existence.  That is an amazing statistic given that this is a $30 billion plus industry.  Simply put, if 20% of customers buy 80% of products, why would you continue to print and distribute to 100% when you can now target the 20.  Simple printed objects like Newspaper Circulars no longer make sense when you can target the 3% of the population that actually reads them.

Some major themes that were discussed include:

* The challenges of privacy and the difficulty of managing sensitive data.
* Education requirements for graphic artists that have always designed for offset and now need to design for digital
* Evolution of True one to one solutions including data modeling and triggered/automated communications approaches
* Transpromo (promotional pieces/mailings that are based on providing a specific offer to a specific person)
* The dramatic increase in content creation through online applications
* Merging of personal content and syndicated content (Memory books)
* Environmental pressures

On the equipment front, the capabilities of digital printing machines continue to evolve.  The highlight for me was the equipment demo’/d in the Xerox display that showed automation advances in book publishing on demand and direct mail automation where one machine can create an envelope for and stuff a direct mail piece.  They also showed how sales organizations are choosing customized sales collateral via an on demand interface vs. preprinted collateral that isn’t customized for a specific circumstance.

Some other fun facts on printing in general:

- The equivalent of 9 trillion printed pages per year are seen on computer screens.  These documents are never printed, but if they were, they would equal that number (who knows how they figure these things out).
- The average American worker uses one sheet of paper every 12 minutes.  That equates to a ream of paper every 2 and 1/2 weeks or 100 - 200 pounds of paper a year.
- The introduction of email into the office resulted in a 40% increase in paper consumption.
- Predictions of the paperless office are 33 years old.
- Office workers throw out 45% of what they print driven by reports, “to do” lists, drafts and emails.

From a “green” perspective employee behavior has a long way to go.

Over 2 trillion dollars in sales are driven by direct marketing offers
7.5% of all US employment is direct marketing driven
Part of GDP that direct marketing drives is growing at 5% vs. overall US GDP is 4%.
For the first time last year direct marketing represented more than 50% of all marketing expenditures

Direct marketing is being threatened by “do not mail” legislation that is now under consideration in 11 states. 

That’s all for now.

Tags: carbon footprint, digitial printing, offset printing, on demand conference and exposition, xerox