Monday, July 10, 2006
Sorry I Haven't Written Lately
Graphic Design USA recently conducted a survey, sponsored by MAN Roland, that extols the importance of print. While I have some different interpretations of the data, some of which I will write about at some time, I strongly recommend the reading of the report. An important thing to keep in mind: designers affect principally the sheetfed markets and short-run web business, so you can't use the data to project to the entire industry. But it does, as I've long been a proponent of, add to the understanding of why people print: watch what the creatives do and you get a good sense of where the business is headed. Of course, there is no mention of this survey anywhere on the site that supposedly promotes the industry... you know, www.theprintcouncil.org, but don't go to www.printcouncil.org, which is a different organization. :)
http://www.gdusa.com/issue_2006/06_june/feature/June06PrintSurvey.pdf
EDSF study says that e-documents don't necessarily cut down on printing. Note that EDSF is not focused on the commercial printing industry, but has a heavy emphasis on corporate documents. Their report would be quite different if they focused on commercial.... after all, we know that shipments of printing and raw paper shipments are down despite a growing economy and population. Nonetheless, an interesting report.
http://www.edsf.org/pdfs/EDSF_2006_Trends_Survey.pdf
Bob Coen's Insiders Report on Advertising Expenditures
Story http://www.dmnews.com/cms/dm-news/direct-mail/37352.preview
Report http://www.mccann.com/news/pdfs/Insiders6_06.pdf
NY Times report about Conde Nast's use of text messaging in conjunction with ads...
The magazine, Lucky, will offer readers of its September issue a chance to send text messages from their mobile phones to buy merchandise from 18 marketers and retailers, which include Avon, Liz Claiborne, Estée Lauder, L'Oréal, Target and Unilever. The program, called "Live Buy It," uses a service from the PayPal unit of eBay known as PayPal Mobile Text2Buy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/10/technology/10adcol.html
I haven't blogged about energy prices in a while, but this article got me going
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-060628travel-story,1,2323784.story?track=rss&ctrack=1&cset=true
-- It's about the record number of drivers for the 4th of July weekend, despite high gas prices, which as we know are not at historical highs at all.
Driving is a strange thing... you should probably compare it to population growth. So when population growth is about 1% a year, and driving will increase by +1.3% compared to last year, that's probably a big deal. Key paragraph:
``People are finding a way around the issue of gas prices,'' AAA Chief Executive Officer Robert Darbelnet said in a telephone interview from Washington. ``We see people expressing more interest in the budget hotels in contrast to the more pricy hotels,'' he said. ``The only times we see a dip in peoples' willingness to take a road trip is when the availability of gas is in question.''
Yes, economics works. People adjust consumption patterns based on their perceived income, and they make substitutions when needed. That's one of the blessings of living in a diverse, free enterprise economy. People actually have things to choose from. Companies are doing the same thing with the way that they manage energy prices, too. After all, most companies are run by people.
Office 2007 delayed !
http://today.reuters.com/stocks/QuoteCompanyNewsArticle.aspx?view=CN&storyID=2006-06-29T231453Z_01_N29257578_RTRIDST_0_TECH-MICROSOFT-DELAY-UPDATE-3.XML&rpc=66
Not worth changing?
http://news.com.com/Office+upgrade+hard+to+justify,+warns+analyst/2100-1012_3-6086693.html?tag=nefd.top
"all companies will be required to deploy converters to ensure that their users are able to interact with early adopters of Office 2007. "All of you will have to deploy converters later this year or early 2007," she told her audience of IT professionals. "
http://www.gdusa.com/issue_2006/06_june/feature/June06PrintSurvey.pdf
EDSF study says that e-documents don't necessarily cut down on printing. Note that EDSF is not focused on the commercial printing industry, but has a heavy emphasis on corporate documents. Their report would be quite different if they focused on commercial.... after all, we know that shipments of printing and raw paper shipments are down despite a growing economy and population. Nonetheless, an interesting report.
http://www.edsf.org/pdfs/EDSF_2006_Trends_Survey.pdf
Bob Coen's Insiders Report on Advertising Expenditures
Story http://www.dmnews.com/cms/dm-news/direct-mail/37352.preview
Report http://www.mccann.com/news/pdfs/Insiders6_06.pdf
NY Times report about Conde Nast's use of text messaging in conjunction with ads...
The magazine, Lucky, will offer readers of its September issue a chance to send text messages from their mobile phones to buy merchandise from 18 marketers and retailers, which include Avon, Liz Claiborne, Estée Lauder, L'Oréal, Target and Unilever. The program, called "Live Buy It," uses a service from the PayPal unit of eBay known as PayPal Mobile Text2Buy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/10/technology/10adcol.html
I haven't blogged about energy prices in a while, but this article got me going
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-060628travel-story,1,2323784.story?track=rss&ctrack=1&cset=true
-- It's about the record number of drivers for the 4th of July weekend, despite high gas prices, which as we know are not at historical highs at all.
Driving is a strange thing... you should probably compare it to population growth. So when population growth is about 1% a year, and driving will increase by +1.3% compared to last year, that's probably a big deal. Key paragraph:
``People are finding a way around the issue of gas prices,'' AAA Chief Executive Officer Robert Darbelnet said in a telephone interview from Washington. ``We see people expressing more interest in the budget hotels in contrast to the more pricy hotels,'' he said. ``The only times we see a dip in peoples' willingness to take a road trip is when the availability of gas is in question.''
Yes, economics works. People adjust consumption patterns based on their perceived income, and they make substitutions when needed. That's one of the blessings of living in a diverse, free enterprise economy. People actually have things to choose from. Companies are doing the same thing with the way that they manage energy prices, too. After all, most companies are run by people.
Office 2007 delayed !
http://today.reuters.com/stocks/QuoteCompanyNewsArticle.aspx?view=CN&storyID=2006-06-29T231453Z_01_N29257578_RTRIDST_0_TECH-MICROSOFT-DELAY-UPDATE-3.XML&rpc=66
Not worth changing?
http://news.com.com/Office+upgrade+hard+to+justify,+warns+analyst/2100-1012_3-6086693.html?tag=nefd.top
"all companies will be required to deploy converters to ensure that their users are able to interact with early adopters of Office 2007. "All of you will have to deploy converters later this year or early 2007," she told her audience of IT professionals. "
