eDocPublish.com Blog

IP Announces 100% Recycled Paper for North American Customers

jackk — Fri, 04 May 2012 16:59:18 +0000

IP Announces 100% Recycled Paper for North American Customers
Friday, May 04, 2012

International Paper is pleased to announce the launch of a 100% recycled paper offering, Hammermill Great White 100 to North American customers. The paper is the newest product to join the Hammermill Great White line of recycled products.

“Consumers are interested in recycled paper products, but they also want confidence in the quality and how the product performs. Hammermill Great White 100 is the best of both worlds and offers a dependable 99.99% Jam-Free Guarantee paper that has a 92 brightness. It’s a great paper that runs smoothly, looks sharp, and contains 100% post consumer fiber,” said Jon Ernst, International Paper vice president for Imaging Papers.

This product is produced at IP’s world-class Riverdale, Ala. Mill and comes after a multi-million dollar investment into their recycled product capabilities. The Hammermill Great White 100 joins IP’s 30% and 50% recycled paper offerings already available and carries the Forest Stewardship Council certification.

The product launch coincides with the celebration of the Hammermill brand’s 100th anniversary. “Hammermill is one of oldest brands in the industry because of its ability to continually evolve to meet customer needs and this product is our latest example of meeting consumers where they are in the marketplace,” added Ernst.

Landa’s Breakthrough Nanographic Printing Presses

jackk — Thu, 03 May 2012 15:19:51 +0000

Landa Corporation today announced the details of its groundbreaking Landa Nanographic Printing Presses that are set to transform mainstream commercial, packaging and publishing markets. With output speeds comparable to offset presses and employing NanoInk colorants that create unprecedented image qualities, the Landa Nanographic Printing Press portfolio is set to fundamentally change printing as we know it.

Landa Founder, Chairman and CEO Benny Landa says, “Nanography is a new technology for applying ink to paper. In developing Landa Nanographic Printing we had to re-think and reinvent the printing press. The result is digital printing with remarkable performance – from a family of presses that share stunning ergonomic design, a small footprint and some of the most advanced user functionality available in the market.”

Landa Nanographic Printing Presses
At drupa 2012, Landa is unveiling a family of six Nanographic Printing presses – three sheetfed and three web presses – that enable print providers to produce short-to-medium run lengths at unmatched cost-per-page.

Each of the three sheetfed presses can print in up to eight colors and can use spot and specialty colors for a range of applications including general commercial printing, marketing collateral, medium-run books and manuals, direct mail and short-run folding cartons:

The Landa S5 Nanographic Printing Press is a B3 (20 in.) entry-level press for fast and easy transition to digital production. The Landa S5 can print single-side at speeds of up to 11,000 SPH on any off-the-shelf media (60-350 gsm).
The Landa S7 Nanographic Printing Press is the most productive B2 (29 in.) digital production press on the market. It is capable of single- or double-sided printing at speeds of up to 12,000 SPH on any off-the-shelf media (60-350 gsm).
The Landa S10 Nanographic Printing Press is the market’s first B1 (41 in.) digital production press. It is able to print single-side or double-side at up to 13,000 SPH on any off-the-shelf stock (60-400 gsm). A straight printing (simplex) model for folding carton operates at up to 6,500 SPH on virgin and recycled carton board, metalized stock (200-1000 micron thickness) and plastic foils.
The three web presses can print in up to eight colors and are aimed at commercial printing, publishing, labels, and flexible packaging:

The Landa W5 Nanographic Printing Press is a 560 mm (22 in.) web width press capable of single-sided printing at up to 200 m/min (656 ft/min) on plastic films and shrink sleeves (12 to 250 microns) and on label stocks, tube stocks,aluminum foil and paper (50 to 300 microns).
The Landa W10 Nanographic Printing Press is a 1,020 mm (40 in.) web width press, capable of single-sided printing at up to 200 m/min (656 ft/min) on film stock (12-250 microns) and on paper (50-300 microns). As Landa NanoInk will be FDA-compliant for food packaging, the W10 should be of interest to mainstream packaging converters.
The Landa W50 Nanographic Printing Press is a 560 mm (22 in.) web width press for high-volume, digital production and is capable of double-sided printing at up to 200 m/min (656 ft/min) on any coated or uncoated paper (40-300 gsm). It is ideally suited for publishing books, magazines, periodicals, annual reports, journals, directories, manuals, direct mail with personalization and versioning… and more.
“Landa Nanographic Printing Presses are intended not to replace offset printing, but to complement it. For the foreseeable future, offset printing will continue to be the preferred method for producing run lengths of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands,” says Benny Landa. “But the market is demanding shorter and shorter run lengths – and that’s where Nanography comes in – to enable print service providers to produce those short to medium run lengths economically – at offset speeds. That’s what we mean when we say that Landa Nanographic Printing brings digital to the mainstream.”

The Nanographic Printing Process
At the heart of the Nanographic Printing process are Landa NanoInk colorants. Comprised of pigment particles only tens of nanometers in size (1 nanometer is about 100,000 times thinner than a human hair), these nano-pigments are extremely powerful absorbers of light and enable unprecedented image qualities. Landa Nanographic Printing is characterized by ultra-sharp dots of extremely high uniformity, high gloss fidelity and the broadest color gamut of any four-color printing process.

Nanographic Printing begins with the ejection of billions of microscopic droplets of water-based Landa NanoInk onto a heated blanket conveyor belt. Each droplet of aqueous NanoInk lands at a precise location on the belt, creating the color image. As the water evaporates, the ink becomes an ultra-thin dry polymeric film, less than half the thickness of offset images.

The resulting image is then transferred to any kind of ordinary paper, coated or uncoated, or onto any plastic packaging film – without requiring pre-treatment. The NanoInk film image instantaneously bonds to the surface; forming a tough, abrasion-resistant, laminated layer that doesn’t leave any residual ink on the blanket.

Since NanoInk images are already dry, there is no need for post drying. Doubled-sided printing becomes simple and printed goods can be immediately handled, right off the press, even when using the most aggressive finishing equipment.

Unique Graphic User Interface
The stunning new design of the Landa Nanographic Printing Press features the Landa Touchscreen, an oversized user interface that enables even an untrained operator to quickly master the press. Press controls appear both on the left and right sides of the screen to allow convenient operation from either the feeder or delivery end of the press.

The right side of the display is dedicated to job management. Here, the operator can easily organize the optimum job sequences for maximum press utilization aided by one of the many built-in job management tools. The left side of the touchscreen is dedicated to press functions. Real time graphics show the status of all press functions and stream live video images of each of the key stations including sheet feeding, image transfer and sheet delivery. Every function, such as ink levels, paper supply, and operational status, are clearly and intuitively displayed.

Due to the high degree of automation on Landa Nanographic Printing Presses, a single operator can manage two, three or even four presses at a time. When the operator leaves the press, the display switches to Vital Signs Mode, in which key indicators are presented in large fonts that can be easily read from 50 meters away. In addition, the entire user interface is duplicated on a portable touchscreen tablet that can be magnetically attached to the press at any convenient location.

WhatTheyThink

Who has your data!

jackk — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 15:39:58 +0000

Following the Breadcrumbs on the Data-Sharing Trail

WOULD you like to donate to the Obama campaign? Sign up for a college course? Or maybe subscribe to Architectural Digest?

If you have ever felt inundated by such solicitations, by e-mail or by snail mail, you may have wondered what you did to deserve it.

I did.

I wondered how all those campaigns, companies and institutions got my number. And how much money data brokers behind the scenes might make by flipping my name and address.

Turns out there’s no easy way for consumers in the United States to track the data dealers who profile our spending, Web browsing and social media habits, the better to sell us stuff. Although the Federal Trade Commission issued a consumer privacy report last month urging companies that collect and share customer information to give people more notification and control over the proliferation of their personal details, the recommendations don’t have the force of binding regulations.

So, without a right to compel vendors to show me where my data goes, I decided to do some profiling of my own.

I subscribed to a half-dozen print magazines last year, signing up for each with a different typo in my name or variation in my address. Then I collected the direct mail that resulted, tracking the solicitations back to the publishers who had shared my erroneous contact information.

Admittedly, it was unscientific. But I figured this little off-line experiment might provide insight into an even more opaque world — online behavioral targeting — where ad networks deliver tailored marketing pitches to people based on their location, search queries, online purchases and the like.

Here are the results:

Natawsha, the name under which I had subscribed to Wired and The New Yorker, got hit up for a donation to Literacy Partners, a tutoring company in Manhattan, and received a bulletin from the New-York Historical Society.

Nafasha, who signed up for Fast Company, received solicitations from Forbes. The mangled address I had submitted to Foreign Policy received a cascade of mail from, among others, the World Monuments Fund, Barron’s and the Kiplinger Letter. And a subscription to The New York Review of Books led to solicitations from the Central Park Conservancy, the New York Public Library and The New York Times — and, on behalf of President Obama’s 2012 campaign, an appeal from Michelle Obama.

“It is revenue-producing for a publisher to collect subscribers’ information and sell it,” said Paul Stephens, the director of policy and advocacy at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a consumer group in San Diego. “It’s just information that is very valuable to advertisers who want to target individuals based on their interests.”

INDEED, the Direct Marketing Association, a trade group, has estimated that spending on direct marketing in the United States reached $163 billion in 2011.

Still, a report earlier this year from the White House, laying out a privacy bill of rights for consumers, implicates the decades-old practice of list-sharing, among others. The report says consumers have a right to expect that companies will collect, use and share information in ways consistent with the context in which people provided it.

In other words, if you subscribe to a magazine, you might reasonably expect to receive offers from magazines owned by the same publishing house, said Nancy J. King, a privacy law expert who is an associate professor at Oregon State University’s College of Business.

“But you probably would not have expected a magazine to share your information with a political campaign” that has inferred your political preferences from your choice of periodicals, Professor King said.

Of course, publishers are hardly the only businesses sharing and selling consumer information. In the United States, with the exception of specific sectors like credit and health care, companies are free to use their customers’ data as they deem appropriate. That means every time a person buys a car or a house, takes a trip or stays in a hotel, signs up for a catalog or shops online or in a mall, his or her name might end up on a list shared with other marketers. That can happen directly, or through middlemen known as list brokers and data brokers.

The ultimate purpose of all this sharing and profiling is to personalize marketing, using analytics to predict the offers most likely to interest consumers based on their past behavior, says Linda A. Woolley, the executive vice president of Washington operations at the Direct Marketing Association.

“Sometimes the analytics are right; sometimes they are wrong,” Ms. Woolley said. “The industry exists to try to perfect those guesses.”

For those who’d rather not receive such offers, she said, the trade group offers a dedicated Web site, dmachoice.org, where people can opt out of getting all kinds of direct mail or specific categories of it, like credit card offers.

But Christopher Olsen, the assistant director of privacy and identity protection in the Federal Trade Commission’s bureau of consumer protection, said companies ought to notify their customers if they plan to share information about them with third parties — rather than simply permitting people to opt out after the fact. Indeed, the agency’s recent report calls on industry to be more transparent with consumers.

“If your name is flying around the ether because you have subscribed to a magazine,” Mr. Olsen said, “you ought to understand who has got that information and whether you have a choice about its onward distribution.”

ALTHOUGH all of the magazines contacted for this article said their subscribers could opt out, some publishers took a more active approach than others to notifying readers of their practices.

Natalie Raabe, a spokeswoman for The Atlantic, for example, said the magazine occasionally allows companies it has screened to contact subscribers about products or services that may be of interest. But the magazine does not share subscriber addresses directly with these companies, she said; it uses a third party to administer the process.

A spokeswoman for Condé Nast, publisher of The New Yorker, said it adhered to industry best practices and offered subscribers multiple ways to opt out.

Diane R. Seltzer, list manager at The New York Review of Books, vets all proposals from companies that want to market to subscribers to ensure the offers are appropriate. Those making the cut are charged a rental fee of $105 per 1,000 names for one-time use, she said. The publication runs an ad in every issue, she added, notifying subscribers of this practice and explaining how to opt out.

“We are very proactive in trying to keep subscribers happy,” she said.

In light of the new federal privacy reports, however, at least one publisher said it might halt, or at least further limit, the selling of its subscriber list.

“I think media companies are going to have to tackle this issue,” said David Rothkopf, the new chief executive of Foreign Policy. Two months into the job, he said, he had hired a new circulation director and intended to review his magazines’ list-sharing policy: “I think there are people out there who don’t want to be part of some giant circulating mailing list.”

E-mail: slipstream@nytimes.com.

Image Impact, Simple retro effects

nidal — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 06:20:12 +0000

False duotone:

a normal halftone printed over a flat screen of an accent color
When dinosaurs roamed the earth and letterpress was the printing process of choice, full color was a luxury few advertisers could justify.

Two color printing was the usual way to make a job stand out, and for special jobs duotones might be used for high end reproduction. This was a technically demanding process and not cheap. False duotones emerged as a way to enliven a design by mimicking the look of true duotones, while avoiding the expense.
They can still help you catch attention and make your point, even in the digital age.

Simple retro effects, step by step
The false duotone can still be useful in two color printing, where its simplicity can help you get your point across on a tight budget. It’s also a great addition to your toolbox for full color work. It can help focus attention on a point of interest, add retro style to your concept, or create a consistent look when images are pulled from different sources.
Tips and tricks
Any color or grayscale image can be a good starting point. The first step is to create a halftone, or to reduce the color range of your image to look like a halftone. The technique you use to do this has a strong effect on the final appearance.
Example 1 shows the result of the desaturate command: Image >; Adjustments >; Desaturate. This is really a process color quadtone with a neutral cast.
Example 4 shows a halftone effect created from an RGB color image by applying the Image >; Adjustments >; Black & White command. The Maximum White Preset was used to lighten highlights and midtones and create good contrast. The result was copied and pasted into the black channel of a CMYK image.
For these examples, color overlays were created with the path tool. The resulting fills were set to blend in multiply mode, with opacity reduced to 40%.
Example 2 shows how the overlays colorize the quadtone from example 1. Example 3 shows a brighter, cleaner result using the same color overlays over the simulated halftone from example 4.
For full color reproduction, you can save your false duotones as CMYK tiff images. For match color printing, set the color overlays up in spot color channels and save the file in eps format.

Will social media marketing work for your business?

jackk — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 02:59:38 +0000

Are Twitter and Facebook your new marketing frontier? Or all sizzle and no steak?
All the buzz and explosive growth makes it seem every marketer should be getting into social media, but your potential results depend on who your customers are and how they make buying decisions. Online social tools can drive significant results only with the right audience and strategies.

Little or no cost and high potential impact make social media appealing to guerrilla marketers and established consumer brands alike. However, a well thought out campaign requires a real investment of time, which could break the deal for many smaller marketers. Here are some considerations to help you figure out if an investment in social media marketing is worth testing.
1 Social B2C – it’s the new TV
Social media are highly compatible with B2C marketing because they present a new twist on well established methods. In fact they are replacing TV and “old” media as a way to create awareness, engage interest and drive traffic or stimulate action. Effective social campaigns are ubiquitously available, involving, interactive, and easy to share, all of which gives them the potential to “go viral”. Major marketers have achieved very high returns from campaigns that take advantage of these characteristics.

2 B2B – use with caution.
While B2C purchases are often driven by emotional impulses, B2B buyers are rational and risk averse, making larger transactions after complex sales cycles. The bite size entries and serendipity of social media are less likely to change buyer behavior or attract useful leads. What’s more, most B2B markets are small and specialized, making social media an inefficient way to reach the right decision makers. In any case, not many senior business people have time or inclination for social media – the demographics are heavily skewed toward younger people. If your target audience is on Twitter, then by all means test it as a way to engage them, but for B2B you may find social media more useful for personal connections that help with sales than as a marketing channel.
3 What is your audience looking for?
Understanding the behavior of your target audience is crucial. If you find a segment of your market using social media, what are they there for? Many users simply want to keep up with friends and be entertained, though a growing number want to find useful information and make connections. If you can structure messages, campaigns and content that people will welcome in the context of their usage, you have a good chance of success. Another factor: if you have enough clout to bring your audience with you, you can gain traction quickly. If you have to start building a following from scratch, it may take a while.
4 Assessing potential ROI
Avoid the temptation to think of social media marketing as just a branding exercise, where entertainment today will translate to purchases tomorrow. Instead, approach it as a way to connect with people whose enthusiasm for your content can be channelled to avenues of communication where a sales process is welcome, and results can be measured. Then you can compare performance with other marketing channels and make sound, profitable decisions.
Be sure to factor in the time and effort required to plan, implement and monitor social media campaigns.

Anti-piracy bill: California lawmakers weigh bill to allow warrantless searches of CD and DVD makers

jackk — Sun, 22 May 2011 03:03:51 +0000

MAY 18, 2011 ·
Optical disc replicators in California would be required to keep detailed records of job orders and equipment purchases or face stiff criminal fines, under new anti-piracy legislation now making its way through the state’s Senate.
The legislation, introduced earlier this year by California State Sen. Alex Padilla, aims to strengthen an existing state law that requires replicators to include source identification information on every disc they manufacture. In addition to specifying new documentation requirements and raising fines for violations, the proposed amendments authorize law enforcement to conduct warrantless compliance inspections of the state’s replication facilities.

The warrantless inspection measure raises concerns for some that the law intrudes upon constitutional protections against unreasonable searches, according to the Los Angeles Times. The website reports that the California Senate is set to hold a final committee hearing on the SB 550 bill on Monday, after which it will proceed to the Senate floor.
The replication industry has long maintained its own set of anti-piracy business practices, with companies following record-keeping protocols and other standards developed by the Content Delivery & Storage Association (CDSA).
“For over ten years reputable replication plants have adhered to strict copyright and licensing and content protection policies and audits through CDSA accreditation programs. These accredited sites are publicly posted on the CDSA website (www.CDSAonline.com) for all content holders to review and they should always be the preferred vendors for all their CD, DVD or Blu-ray manufacturing,” said Martin Porter, CDSA executive director. “Content holders should always inquire first if replicators are CLV (Copyright and Licensing Verification) and CPS (Content Protection and Security) accredited.”
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), meanwhile, supports the stricter legislation as part of an ongoing effort to eliminate counterfeit CD disc manufacturing in the state. An RIAA spokesperson tells M&E Daily that the new law is designed to ensure California replicators’ compliance with the state’s optical disc identification legislation, which was enacted in 1999.
“Given the music community’s large presence in California and significant contributions to the state economy through thousands of jobs and benefits,” the RIAA spokesperson says, “this narrowly-tailored bill helps ensure these contributions are preserved while sending the important message that counterfeit replicators are not welcome in the state. If a replicator is already in compliance with state law, they should have nothing to worry about with this proposed legislation.”

M&E

Reform bill introduced to boost USPS’ viability

jackk — Sun, 22 May 2011 02:55:00 +0000

Reform bill introduced to boost USPS’ viability

May 18, 2011 – 12:46 pm EDT

Washington, D.C.—A bill has been introduced in the U.S. Senate that would address several issues affecting the financially struggling U.S. Postal Service and help ensure its future solvency.Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del, has floated a new bill—the Postal Operations Sustainment and Transformation Act of 2011—that would offer relief from the Postal Service’s current obligations to prefund future pension obligations, and cut Saturday home mail delivery. It is estimated that the bill would provide overall savings, or access to new funds, of about $8 billion annually.

The Postal Service continues to hemorrhage money, due largely to changing consumer and business communications that rely on electronic communications instead of physical mail.

B@B Online

USPS Losses $2.2 Billion this fiscal year (Jan. 1 to March 31)

jackk — Fri, 13 May 2011 19:21:11 +0000

WASHINGTON, DC—Mr. ZIP’s financial woes keep growing, and the news promises to get worse. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) ended the second quarter of this fiscal year (Jan. 1 to March 31) with a net loss of $2.2 billion, compared to a net loss of $1.6 billion for the same period in FY 2010.

The growing loss comes despite what the USPS calls “significant cost reductions and revenue growth initiatives.” The agency reiterated that current financial projections indicate it will have a cash shortfall and reach its statutory borrowing limit by the end of the fiscal year. Absent substantial legislative change, the Postal Service will be forced to default on payments to the federal government.

“The Postal Service continues to seek changes in the law to enable a more flexible and sustainable business model,” said Postmaster General and CEO Patrick Donahoe. “We are committed to working with Congress and the administration to resolve these issues prior to the end of the fiscal year. The Postal Service may return to financial stability only through significant changes to the laws that limit flexibility and impose undue financial burdens.”

Mailing services revenue of $14.0 billion decreased $568 million, or 3.9 percent, in the second quarter of 2011, compared to the same period a year ago. Mailing services volume of 40.7 billion pieces represents a 3.1 percent decline from the same period a year earlier. According to the USPS, revenue from Standard Mail was not sufficient to offset the loss of revenue from the reduced volume of First-Class Mail.

“Sluggish economic growth and diversion of First-Class Mail to electronic alternatives continue to cause record losses, despite a reduction of over 130,000 full-time equivalents in the last three years,” added Joseph Corbett, CFO and executive vice president.

The Postal Service reduced work hours in the second quarter by 9.6 million hours or 3.2 percent. The number of career employees on March 31 was 571,566, a reduction of 6,726 employees during the second quarter.

(PIworld.com)

Ad Design, Basic 20 Point Ad Checklist

jackk — Tue, 03 May 2011 17:29:02 +0000

In the back of “The Million Dollar Sales Letter” book it has a great resource for Ads. After using it for Web, Email and print copy writing with great success, I would like to share it with every one on our list. Give us your feed back on this blog after using it.

Her is the list.

Basic 20-Point Checklist

1. Your sales pitch employs AT LEAST one of the following 7 Key Copy Drivers, and preferably all seven. (If not, tear it up and start over):

Fear

Guilt

Flattery

Exclusivity

Greed

Anger

Salvation

_Yes _ No

2. What follows are the 13 most powerful and evocative words in the English language. If your copy is not laced with these, go back and insert them wherever you can.

You

Money

Guarantee

Love

Results

Proven

Safety

Free

Save

Easy

New

Health

Discovery

_Yes _ No

3. Your sales pitch DOES NOT USE any of the following words: “We,” “Us,” or “Our(s).” (If it does, get rid of them!):

_Yes _ No

4. Your sales pitch is emotional (rather than analytical and highly rational).

_Yes _ No

5. “The prospect doesn’t give a damn about you, your company, are your product. All that matters is, ‘What’s in it for me?’” -Bob Hacker
You are not emphasizing your company or yourself or your product.

_Yes _ No

6. “People want quarter-inch hales, not quarter-inch drills.” -MBA Magazine
Your sales pitch highlights benefits-what this product or service will do for you (e.g., Think of it! You can create quarter-inch hales)-not features (e.g., we want to. sell you a quarter-inch drill).

_Yes _ No

7. “Your jab is to. Sell, not entertain. ” -Jack Maxson
“Cute and clever simply don’t work.” -Nigel Rowe
Your presentation is NOT cute, clever, and entertaining. (If it is, change it.)

_Yes _ No

8. You make an offer.

_Yes _ No

9. “You cannot sell two things at once.” -Dick Benson
You are not giving the prospect too. Many choices.

_Yes _ No

10. “The right after should be so attractive that only a lunatic would say ‘No’, “ -Claude Hopkins
Your offer is the very strongest one you can field.

_Yes _ No

11. Your company name and address appear on every piece in the promotion.

_Yes _ No

12. You include a guarantee of satisfaction.

_Yes _ No

13. You include testimonials from happy customers or donors.

_Yes _ No

14. You have a built-in mechanism that allows the reader to respond.

_Yes _ No

15. You make it easy to respond.

_Yes _ No

16. You have a fail-safe system in place that enables you to measure responses by source.

_Yes _ No

17. You are ready to send out material immediately to all who respond.

_Yes _ No

18. Included with the shipment are absolutely fool-proof instructions.

_Yes _ No

19. If the promotional effort is successful, you can turn on a dime and go out With it immediately again to new prospects.

_Yes _ No

20. Twenty percent of your marketing budget is for testing.

_Yes _ No

What Is The True Value Of Your Business?

jackk — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 04:01:52 +0000

As promised this is the first post from the “The Secrets to Staying in Touch” with customers.
Consider not only your immediate short term needs but also your long term hopes and in that process very carefully consider the value of the customer or the client. Every business, every product line, every service organization even if it is distance from the ultimate consumer by a chain distribution you’re still dependent on an actual consumer for its lasting success.

The greatest asset a business can ever posses is a known list of satisfied, loyal customers. Let me give you a simple example in small business. I was investigating various businesses that I might acquire. One that attracted my attention was a bookstore located on a main street in the center of downtown.

My observations revealed that the store’s inventory mix was poorly selected for its primary clientele, which are business people and office workers. Considerable floor space in the store was being wasted and the store did have excellent traffic during the day.

The asking price for the store was a little high as asking prices usually are but it looked to me like the numbers could be made to work. But then I asked the problem question, “How many people with their home addresses are on your mailing list?” This store owner after five years of operating the business had never bothered to collect his customer’s names and addresses on a mailing list. He had no way to directly reach out to his past and present customers.

He mistakenly thought that the value of a business is its lease, its furniture and fixtures, its inventory, its financial statements. He didn’t understand that none of those things are worth much without customers.

Now let’s take big business. When you buy a new car or a new stereo or a new appliance you are separated from that product’s manufacturer by a chain of distribution that includes manufacturer’s representatives, wholesalers, warehouse operators, and the store or the dealer. Yet you probably filled out a warranty registration card and mailed it to the manufacturer. Why is that done? One reason is so that the manufacturer can find out who its customer is. Some manufacturers then use these lists to market. Others just accumulate the data unsure of what to do with it but at least they’ve got a customer list.

As you establish marketing objectives and strategies for your business I urge you to carefully consider the value of the customer.

In the balance of this email series we’re going to cover a lot of ground. We’ll talk about Market, Message & Medium. We will also be talking about how to do segmentatio, why segmentation is important, what is USP, copy writing, formats of the copy, Mailing, controlling and creating word-of-mouth advertising, use of direct mail advertising, creating effective print advertising materials, sales force management, telemarketing, profit management and much more. But we need to keep the value of the customer in mind as we consider all of these other ideas.
But before we leave this very important concept about the value of American Companies, I want to talk about a few truly excellent American companies that I have observed in your next “The Secrets to Staying in Touch”.