Trend Watch: The Rise of the Blockbuster Self-Promotional Piece

It’s true that printers are not known for being great at promoting themselves, but today’s printers are realizing that they need to shift to speaking the language of their creative customers by providing beautifully designed and tactile publications that actually put their print capabilities into practice.

Driving this trend is the increased competition in specialty printing, and in the advancements in press coatings and digital printing that have changed the game. There’s so much going on that it’s hard for customers to understand the advancements in print and keep track of the capabilities of their different print service providers. However, dropping off a pile of customer samples or distributing basic swatchbooks of coatings and finishes no longer cuts the mustard. Creative people want to see these capabilities applied in exciting ways, and presented in a comprehensive idea resource. 

With that said, for many printers it can be a huge challenge to get everyone on board for the investment in time and money that it takes to design and produce, for example, a nearly 40-page publication where each page is showcasing a creative design, special effect, different or specialty paper, and a production technique—a piece where each page is seemingly more impressive than the last. That was Scott Engle’s challenge when he spearheaded the creation of their “Be Visual” promotion.

Scott is the VP of Marketing for Graphic Visual Solutions in Greensboro, N.C., and he sent me a sample of the promotion a few weeks back as a lead up to a webinar I was working on. It reminded me more of the types of “no holds barred” promotions we see from some of the leading paper companies. I was so impressed with it, that I had to give him a call and learn more about how and why they produced the promotion.

Now, to be clear, Graphic Visual Solutions is not the only printer that is pulling out all the stops to produce highly designed and immaculately produced self-promotional materials for their customers. This is a real trend I’ve been seeing over the past few years with printers all across the country—but I wanted to get Scott’s story, and to understand what really goes into one of these pieces, and to see if it’s worth the effort and expense.

Trish Witkowski: What was the motivation for taking on a self-promotional project of this scale?

Scott Engle: First things first, we wanted our clients to understand what we’re capable of. Print is rapidly evolving, and we wanted to raise the bar, show off a bit, and prove that print is an incredibly powerful way to communicate while educating our customers.

For us as a team, it also became a great way for us to do our own R&D. We had all of this cutting edge equipment, and capable, knowledgeable people on staff, and we used it as a tool to actively learn and refine our techniques ahead of the curve. We were seeing so many interesting techniques in the market, so why passively wait for a project come in? We made our own exciting project and challenged the team to push the boundaries and make it happen. Sometimes we crashed and burned, but it was part of the learning process—we always solved the problem and rose out of it like a Phoenix. It’s been a huge confidence-builder for our production team. We’ve done so much at this point, that our team doesn’t fear a challenge, they just attack it head-on.

Lastly, the promotional piece has been an asset for our sales team. With so many of our capabilities demonstrated in one publication, it serves as a baseline of our capabilities, and as a springboard for creative discussions with clients. It has turned the conversation from imagining what we “could do” to demonstrating what we “did.”

TW: How did you get the project done, and how long did it take?

SE: We designed it in-house, which we’re very proud of. In fact, the piece won four Benny Awards last year. The two I’m most proud of were for “Special Innovation in Printing” and for “Booklets with 4 or More Colors, Creative Companies/Agencies.” I feel like we hit both ends of the spectrum with great design enhanced by innovative printing techniques. 

With regard to how we did it, it took a lot of time, money and planning. I can’t share the cost with you (hint: $$$!), but I can say it was hundreds of hours of work, and about a year of design and development. The production planning was critical, moving across offset and digital presses with different substrates and in-line, near-line and off-line coating and finishing techniques. However we designed the piece as individual pages with wire-o binding so that we could have the ultimate flexibility and life cycle of the piece. We can update and add/subtract pages as needed. With that said, it was hard to decide when the piece was “done.” At some point, you just have to stop adding pages and start getting it out there!

TW: Was it all worth it?

SE: Absolutely. The response has been incredible. Our clients love it, and our sales team feels really good about it. We’re seeing jobs come in that we can say are direct descendants of this piece—sure, the client gives it their own twist, but they went from not asking for this technique to suddenly asking for the processes we used in the book. Even better, they’re happy because they’re seeing greater response in their print communications, and isn’t that what it’s all about?

For us internally, it’s been a huge win. It’s been a confidence-builder, a point of pride, and an exciting accomplishment. Our entire team poured their heart and soul into this, and it’s a testament to the power of print. We all stand and look at this piece knowing that we’ve elevated our game.