Editorial - Graphic Monthly Canada

February 2008

Too much talk about the Internet? No way

Concerns about the Web could be blinding us about the opportunities it presents

At some point, maybe about a year ago, I began to worry that I was devoting too many words in these pages to the Internet. Sounding like a broken record, I thought. So I decided to cut back and focus on other things. Well, I think I was wrong. Partly because one day I was browsing through several printers’ websites and came away decidedly unimpressed. Sure, many of them are lovely, but most communicate little to visitors–they’re basically brochure websites. You know, they give the history of the organization, declare that the shop is dedicated to superior quality, and boast about the latest piece of equipment on the shop floor. All good stuff, I guess, but does it help sell anything? Almost none of the websites I’ve seen are enabled for web-to-print.

As an industry we are not—generally—seizing the opportunities the Internet delivers. And Web technologies are moving so rapidly that unless we begin to adopt and leverage online tools, we’ll never master the sophistication of emerging trends like Web 2.0.

If you haven’t heard the term, Wikipedia describes Web 2.0 as the second generation of web-based communities and hosted services—such as social-networking sites, wikis, and folksonomies—which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing between users. Those in the know say it will change the way we communicate. Consumers will participate in the creation process, i.e. suggest what sweaters should look like to garment makers, or contribute to online publications. Organizations can tap into online communities to solve problems, putting scores of imaginations to work for free, as in the IT realm.

HP is one company that’s trying to harness the possibilities of this new online world. A few months ago it launched a huge campaign called Print 2.0 that uses the Internet to drive demand for print in a couple of ways. First HP plans to deliver tools to customers to make it easier to manage and print Web pages on their home printers. Second, it plans to aggregate demand for print from disparate print buyers and channel it to print shops. Two of its websites, snapfish.com—to manage and print photos—and logoworks.com—to create branding and marketing packages for small-businesses—are some of the initial offerings in this area. HP is backing its position with a $300 million global marketing campaign.

Yet in the printing industry much of the talk surrounding the Internet is still about how we can counter the evil forces of the digital age. We’re spending so much time trying to prove that print is a better form of communication than digital that we may be missing the bigger picture: it’s not an either/or proposition. Print and the Internet work really well together, each driving eyeballs to the other. It’s clearly emerging that the Internet is a great partner for print. It can create new markets, expand geographic horizons, tap into unseen demand, and create new and profitable partnerships.

Who knew, for example that so many yearn to express themselves and have turned to online on-demand publishing to print works that no large publisher could touch because the small print runs made it unfeasible? The Internet has enabled that. It’s created a large market for photobooks, personalized calendars, and other printed doodads. And it’s re-making business models in the printing industry. For example, take a look at 4-over—www.4over.com—a huge trade house in the U.S. that’s strictly Internet based.

So yes, we’ll likely be talking a lot about the Internet this year.

Filomena Tamburri is the editor of Graphic Monthly Canada. She can be reached at ftamburri@graphicmonthly.ca