At a recent DM News event in New York City, the Global Creative Jam, I showed a roomful of designers the only digital, tactile printing available on the market. Their response was overwhelming, with comments such as "This is just what my client/job/campaign, needs!" Everyone at the event was talking about feeling the fuzz of a peach, the wood grain of a hardwood floor, the softness of a flower petal. They were talking about Kodak NexPress Dimensional Printing.

When industry expert Frank Romano saw the solution, he started talking about it too. Frank immediately saw the merit and value this solution brings to print service providers. He said, "It adds a new capability to what they're doing. It gives them a new revenue stream. It gives them a new opportunity for new business. And that's what it's all about. In this economy, we need to find new business and value added printing, and Kodak Dimensional Printing does that." Hear what else Frank had to say in this video.



Kodak NexPress Dimensional Printing is a unique Kodak solution and it's one way to make print even more powerful. It's just one of the applications made possible by the Kodak Fifth Imaging Unit Solutions, including clear coating, watermarking, glossing, protection coating, and MICR. All add value to the printed piece.

Differentiation... it's a beautiful thing, especially when it provides additional value for your clients and more business for you. It's Kodak innovation at work for your business.

Those words from Antonio Perez, in a video message on Thursday, affirmed Kodak's commitment to helping customers grow their digital print business with its inkjet and electrophotographic toner portfolio.

Print, as the cornerstone of an integrated communications campaign, offers marketers a unique ability to reach consumers on a mass all the way through to a 1:1 basis. Digital print makes it possible for marketers to move from mass communication to mass customization. Digitally printed pieces personalized to each recipient contribute to greater ROI for a multimedia communications campaign that may include web, email or other components. By offering offset class digital printing with these other integrated services, print service providers become even more valuable to their customers as a provider of marketing services.

Digital print opens doors to a range of opportunities for print service providers to provide innovative services and applications to their customers. With a continuum of digital print solutions, for printers new to the technology or with years of experience, Kodak stands ready to work side by side with its customers as they seek to increase sales, loyalty and value.

"Personalized media" used to mean going running with a pair of headphones and a small AM/FM radio. Not anymore. Now, you can hit the road carrying hundreds of your own favorite songs on a digital device so small it can clip on your headband.

Catching up on the day's events along with millions of other people on the nightly television news is still an option, but you can also quickly program your DVR to capture the newscast for viewing when it is more convenient for you. Our choices of reading materials are no longer limited to what you might find in a library or bookstore. Today, you can browse on line to find literally any title you're seeking and have it shipped directly to your door in a matter of days - without ever having stepped out of your house. Now, we can even custom print the foods we love. I ordered M&M candies a few weeks back with personalized messages to give as gifts to friends.

We've entered an entirely new era of what I like to call "mass customization." Never before have so many people had the ability to personalize the media, and so many other items they consume (consider the almost endless drink customizations you hear ordered at Starbucks).

With relative ease, the "masses" can select only the information and entertainment they choose while filtering out the noise that gets in the way of what they want to enjoy. In this new world, consumers are exploiting the power of online, handheld, broadcast and print media in self concocted recipes that feed their personal appetites. That's what the founder of the popular technology news website CNet has found. According to the New York Times (Nov. 21, 2007), Halsey Minor, who launched CNet with the belief that magazines were at the end of life, continued to find himself reading more than a 100 magazines a month, even as he created and consumed volumes of online content. Like most of us, Minor couldn't give up the enjoyment or convenience he got from holding a magazine and flipping through the pages. So, he teamed up with the creators of a magazine about photography that allows online visitors to select the material that is ultimately published in a printed magazine. Users go to jpgmag.com and vote on the pictures they want to see in a high-quality photo magazine that is available on newsstands, and six times a year by paid subscription. Together, they've created a new web publishing venture built entirely around the powerful convergence of the internet and print communications - and the insatiable desire of today's media consumers to customize the content they receive. Kodak is helping usher in this new world, providing technologies and expertise for print service providers to capitalize on new cross platform opportunities. Of course, Kodak's new digital inkjet and electrophotographic output solutions allow the ability to print one-to-one materials. Kodak also offers software solutions that can help you manage variable data and images, to set up personalized URLs on the web that are tied to print communications, and to build robust e-commerce models.

The Kodak Gallery is helping to serve the need for mass customization. Every day, thousands of people go to kodakgallery.com to upload and download photos, buy digital prints and order everything from coffee mugs to calendars to photo books featuring pictures they shot and selected.

Mass communication, the traditional strong hold of the printing industry, still drives most of the volume and revenue of the global printing industry. It will continue to be that way for as long as most of the experts can foresee. Print has a unique and powerful ability to cost efficiently deliver information and entertainment to millions and millions of people.

New media technologies now mean that among those millions there are hundreds of thousands of people who will sculpt the information they receive in all forms of media. Print service providers have the opportunity to build their business strategies to capitalize on the opportunities that personalized media creates.

Do you have any examples of successful campaigns using personalized media?

I drive a lot of people crazy about new media.  I get an idea or see something cool going on and I say, "Hey, we should be doing something like that."  I do it because it's changing the way all of us do business. 

Of course, we all live in a multi-tasking, hyper speed world ... and not everyone gets enthused about each new project.  But this one - the new GrowYourBiz blog - well, it was easy to get people to sign on.  When word got around that we were setting up a blog about Kodak's GCG and building a site for customers and Kodak employees to be able to exchange ideas and information, the response was overwhelming - people jumped in and said they'd contribute. 

They want the chance to share what they're thinking about what's going on in the business.  Might be their point of view on a new technology.  Could be a question they want to ask about what's going on in the marketplace.  Maybe they went to a conference and want to share what they saw.

Like me.  I'm posting this message from Dusseldorf on the opening day of drupa 2008. It's great coming to events like drupa. I love talking with customers, and seeing old friends.  Lots of shop talk and I usually pick up a lot of new ideas.  I want to hear more of what our customers are thinking and doing.  I want to be able to stay in touch on a weekly, daily or even hourly basis.

So welcome to GrowYourBiz.  Internet communities are not just for fun anymore, they're a place to discuss the meaningful aspects of our lives, business and it's future.  Don't leave us hanging.  Speak your mind.  Ask questions. Disagree.  Tell me to go eat a Meatball Sundae.  Whatever you do, participate.  We can have fun at the same time that we learn some things that may help all of our businesses.

What do you think?  Let me know.

Kevin