MFSANY-PIA “Postal Boot Camp” Prepares Recruits for Survival on the Front Lines of Direct Mail

On July 17, George Heinrich, “The Postal Professor, guided about 40 MFSANY and PIA members through the basics of dealing with the U.S. Postal Service.

If you are already a mailer, the following statement about dealing with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) won’t shock you. If you are thinking about adding mailing to the list of services that your printing company offers, consider it very carefully.

“I’ve been in this business for almost 40 years,” said “The Postal Professor,” a.k.a. George Heinrich, “and for most of that time, it’s been an adversarial relationship.” But, he emphasized that his experience isn’t unique. Every company that prepares printed matter for entry into the mailstream has an “uncontrollable business partner” in the Postal Service, Heinrich said.

Managing the USPS relationship to the extent that it can be managed was the theme of “Postal Boot Camp,” a seminar that Heinrich conducted on July 17 for a group of about 40 people representing lettershops or printing firms that mail for their customers. The all-day program, held at the 101 Club in Manhattan, was a joint presentation of two metro area trade groups, the Mailing & Fulfillment Service Association, New York Chapter (MFSANY) and Printing Industries Alliance (PIA).

Heinrich’s purpose wasn’t to lambast the USPS, an organization he knows through and through from decades of work as the owner of direct mail businesses and as a high-level mailing manager for graphic communication firms. Today, as The Postal Professor, he lectures and consults to help clients profit from more thorough compliance with USPS regulations—a body of rules that confounds even postal personnel with its labyrinthine complexity.

As he put it to his Postal Boot Camp recruits, “What you’re going to learn today are a whole lot of simple little things that wound up costing a lot of money” needlessly because someone put a fold in the wrong place, failed to double-check the positioning of an address, or committed some other processing error that the USPS could and did penalize by charging a higher rate or even declaring the job undeliverable.

He also noted the arbitrariness with which the rules can be applied. Much of what happens to mailings still depends, he said, on the competence and the attitudes of individual USPS representatives—some of whom will know and enforce the fine points, others of whom will not.

The differences in degrees of acquaintance with USPS rules on the part of USPS employees can be “amazing,” according to The Postal Professor.

Delivering his overview with the help of detailed visuals and affable humor, Heinrich covered postal acronyms, classes of mail, sizes and dimensions, barcodes and automation, addressing, presorting, and data management. He also updated the MFSANY and PIA members on significant changes coming their way, such as the mandate to adopt Intelligent Mail Barcoding (IMB) for some classes of mail in January 2013.

The Postal Service, he reminded them, is by nature “a behemoth—something abnormally large and powerful” with rules that can neither be sidestepped nor bent. However, it is not the behemoth that it used to be.

Last year, despite the fact that the number of addresses in the U.S. increased by more than 600,000, the USPS processed 122 million fewer pieces of mail per day than it did in 2008. Operating at a multibillion-dollar net loss, and likely to default on prepayment of future healthcare and retirement benefits, the Postal Service will have to resort to delivery cuts, staffing reductions, consolidation of facilities, and other painful measures to regain stability.

“So, what’s troubling the USPS?” asked Heinrich. He didn’t completely answer the question, but he reminded his audience that whatever lies at the heart of the Postal Service’s problems affects the entire printing and mailing industry as well.

USPS revenues come almost exclusively from the sale of postage, and the mail it handles falls into two broad categories of acceptance: retail or “raw” mail for which the Postal Service does all of the sorting and processing; and discounted mail, in which some of that work is done by the originators. Most of Heinrich’s presentation consisted of practical tips aimed at helping mailers maximize the discounts they can earn by presorting, accurately addressing, barcoding, and otherwise streamlining the mail flow before the Postal Service begins handling individual pieces.

The USPS cannot offer volume-based discounts for most classes of mail. Instead, it rewards mailers for worksharing that makes it easier for the Postal Service to get the mail to its final destination. Discounts also apply to mailing pieces that are sized for compatibility with the Postal Service’s automated sorting equipment.

Worksharing can be a profit center for printers and mailers whose customers count on them to have this kind of expertise—“and I hope that you’re charging for that expertise,” Heinrich said.

The repository of all postal rules and regulations is the Domestic Mail Manual, an 1,862-page document so exquisitely detailed, Heinrich said, that it even addresses the mailability of “small, harmless, cold-blooded animals” such as baby alligators (see section 601.9.3.3). Much of what is in the DMM “is subject to interpretation,” according to Heinrich, who added that in passages where the words “must,” “should,” “may,” and “may not” appear, meanings need to be parsed with extra care.

Heinrich devoted considerable time to the correct design of mailing pieces and the necessity of formatting and printing them exactly the way the USPS expects to receive them. He distributed templates specifying dimensions, aspect ratios, thicknesses, address placements, and other parameters that mailing pieces must satisfy in order to be deemed “machinable” (capable of being handled by the Postal Service’s automated systems) at discounted rates.

From left: Rocco Pozzulo, Lazarus Marketing Inc. (Oceanside, NY), MFSANY board; George Heinrich; Martin Rego, Century Direct (Long Island City, NY), MFSANY board; James W. Prendergast, executive director, MFSANY.

Heinrich also presented a gallery of “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”: design errors that caused the pieces to incur higher-than-anticipated mailing costs.

For example, a self-mailer with an improper aspect ratio had to be manually handled at an upcharge of nearly $50,000. Similarly, a mailpiece with an incorrectly placed vertical fold was kicked up from the automation rate to the higher per-piece charge of a non-machinable letter. Another with the wrong ancillary endorsement line—“return service requested” instead of “change service requested”—cost its mailer three times more per piece than it should have.

What these flubs point to, said Heinrich, is the urgency of educating direct-mail customers—and their designers in particular—about the rewards and the penalties attached to preparing mail for postal entry.

Nothing is more urgent for mailers to master than barcoding, the imprinting and databasing technique that makes automated mail handling possible. Barcodes now appear on most letters and flats (mailpieces with at least one dimension larger than lettersize). Heinrich reminded the group that the USPS offers its best worksharing discounts to mailers who apply barcodes before the pieces enter the mailstream.

On January 28, 2013, use of the Intelligent Mail Barcode (IMB) will become mandatory for mailers wishing to qualify for automation discounts. The IMB, which can encrypt 1,000 times more information than the barcode format it replaces, facilitates sortation all the way to the final point of delivery. It also makes individual pieces trackable, and it contains an automated address change feature as well.

A show of hands indicated that most in the room were familiar with IMB and were either using it or preparing to adopt it. They were less confident about Full Service IMB, a phase of the program that the Postal Service probably will require mailers to join in 2014. Taking part in Full Service IMB secures automation discounts, but it also imposes what Heinrich described as burdensome compliance requirements: electronic filing, investment in software, and testing by the USPS.

Full Service IMB as it is presently structured offers “zero advantage to the mailer,” he said. “The pain level involved in participating in Full Service IMB is very high.”

Heinrich adjourned the Postal Boot Camp with resources and recommendations, one of which was to stay on friendly terms with the personnel at one’s local BMEU (Business Mail Entry Unit). A USPS listserv that can be joined at dmmadvisory@usps.com (“subscribe” in the subject line) sends regular updates on regulatory changes.

The Postal Professor can be reached via his favorite medium at Postal 911, P.O. Box 3096, Parker, CO 80134-1428. His “Postal Hotline” number is 303-325-3048. (MFSA members get 30 minutes of free consultation.) E-mail him at help@postal911.com.

Sandy Alexander “Goes Small” with Purchase of Speedmaster SM 52 Press from Heidelberg

Following its successful launch of a wide and grand format division for retail and visual merchandising, Sandy Alexander (Clifton, NJ) reports that it has “gone small” with the purchase of a Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 52 lithographic press.

“The purchase of the Heidelberg six-color perfector with coater provides us with total flexibility in meeting a client’s printing needs,”  said Mike Graff, president and CEO of Sandy Alexander. “We are now platform agnostic. We have equipment for any size piece or order. We will print with the press that provides our clients with the most impactful marketing campaign at the most efficient price.”

The 20” Speedmaster SM 52 will complement Sandy Alexander’s other printing capabilities, which range from digital printing, full-size sheetfed, and full web with inline finishing and inkjetting to wide and grand format printing. The company says that combining the Speedmaster SM 52 with its digital capabilities—including a soon-to-be-operational HP Indigo 10000 and existing HP Indigo 7500s—will give its clients total flexibility in producing quick-turnaround projects whether they consist of static print or variable data printing for one-to-one marketing.

PIA, MFSANY Want To Recruit A Few Good Printers and Mailers for “Postal Boot Camp”

There’s still time—and plenty of good reason—to sign up for the “Postal Boot Camp for Printers and Mailers” to be presented in Manhattan next Tuesday (July 17) by Printing Industries Alliance (PIA) and the Mailing and Fulfillment Service Association of New York (MFSANY).

According to industry statistics, mailpiece designs that are not compatible with automated processing can cost as much as 70% more to mail. The one-day course will help attendees stay out of the trap by giving them an overall knowledge of the relationship between U.S. Postal Service regulations, postage costs, and delivery times. MFSANY and PIA say that seminar will give attendees a better understanding of how direct mail is produced and how it can be processed to USPS standards and regulations.

The seminar leader is George Heinrich, a.k.a. “the Postal Professor,” a nationally recognized auhority on direct mail and USPS operations. Among the topics he will cover on Tuesday are “Speaking Postal” (BMC, SCF, NCOA, CASS, DPV); classes of mail; shape-based processing; barcodes and automation; presort and discounts; data management; and quality addressing.

The program will take place at the 101 Club, Park Avenue and 40th Street, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The $125 fee includes breakfast, lunch, and breaks. A brochure with complete details can be downloaded from the MFSANY web site.

To register, e-mail MFSANY’s Jim Prendergast (jwpdirect@gmail.com) or PIA’s Kim Tuzzo (ktuzzo@Pialliance.org). Registration requests may be faxed to 212-217-6824 or 716-691-4249. For online registration, go to www.mfsany.org or www.pialliance.org

Places are limited, and the program will not be presented again this year.

 

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn—and So Does “Brooklyn Bound”

It has the population of the fourth largest city in the U.S., the cachet of being the trendiest place to call home in New York, and the brand envy of metropolitan areas the world over. Now all that Brooklyn needs, if not a return of the Dodgers to Ebbets Field, is a gazette—a publication of record that epitomizes the borough’s special appeal and carries the message to a loyal core of readers and advertisers.

Brooklyn Bound aims to be that magazine. Launching this week, it’s a newcomer striving for editorial distinction in a market already well served by a variety of Brooklyn-centric periodicals and blogs. It’s also the embodiment of its founders’ belief that conventional print can more than hold its own in the e- and i-saturated media mix that contemporary Brooklyn represents.

The borough, with its rich cultural composition and its diversified business base, is fertile ground for magazine publishing, according to Benjamin Meadows-Ingram, the founding editor of Brooklyn Bound.

“There isn’t a bigger story in New York than what’s been happening in Brooklyn over the last five to 10 years,” he says. As the title implies, Meadows-Ingram says, the magazine’s mission will be to bind the strands into a continuum of coverage that engages readers “in a conversation that they haven’t had before.”

The conversation begins with the release of the inaugural Summer 2012 issue, now available for free pickup at more than a dozen non-newsstand outlets in Brooklyn and Manhattan (see the web site for the locations). For the time being, while Meadows-Ingram and his co-founders gauge response to the venture, the quarterly publication will have no cover price, postal circulation, or traditional single-copy distribution. The model will change as Brooklyn Bound gains traction with its intended audience, Meadows-Ingram says.

Although the audience consists primarily of young (18- to 44-year-old) Brooklynites, the team behind Brooklyn Bound is determined to give them more than just the über-hip lifestyle fare it sees as common to other media targeting this readership. That’s what’s said to distinguish the editorial spirit of Brooklyn Bound from the competition’s “boutique-focused” emphasis, which Meadows-Ingram regards as “catering to splinters of interest” instead of addressing the vibrancy of the borough as a whole.

Brooklyn, he maintains, is a natural laboratory in which to test the viability of local and hyperlocal publishing to small but highly desirable groups of readers and advertisers. “There is still a big hole in the market for regional publications,” says Meadows-Ingram, who has been a consumer and trade magazine editor for about 15 years. “That nut hasn’t been completely cracked.”

He adds that even if the Brooklyn magazine market—like the rest of the U.S. magazine industry—isn’t exactly “explosive” right now, there’s still plenty of potential for a journal that knows the streets and understands the aspirations of the people living and working on them.

In the first issue, says Meadows-Ingram, “we struck a balance” between life and work with a focus, as the coverline proclaims, on “the new business of the new Brooklyn” and the entrepreneurial personalities behind the borough’s economic upsurge.

There’s a photo essay, for example, presenting 40 people responsible for start-ups in the DUMBO district, and another about the retailing scene at the Atlantic Terminal Mall in Fort Greene. The aim of stories like these, Meadows-Ingram says, will be to “cover all of the economic strengths and weaknesses of the community.”

Brooklyn Bound does business of its own as an advertising-supported publication. The Summer 2012 issue, with a total folio of 100 pages, carries 20 pages of ads. Meadows-Ingram thinks that the magazine’s readership of creatives and “go-getters” should make the space particularly attractive to cultural institutions and schools, among other clientele.

Offset printing of the first issue was done by the YGS Group, a publishing and marketing solutions provider based in York, PA. Meadows-Ingram and his collaborators are convinced that the ink-on-paper palpability of Brooklyn Bound will be the bedrock of its appeal going forward.

They have all been in the print media business long enough to understand the upsides and the risks. Meadows-Ingram, for example, is music editor of Billboard and executive editor of Respect—positions he holds while simultaneously launching Brooklyn Bound. Creative director Jeff Staple runs Staple Design, a creative agency with a fashion line and a retail store. John Francis Peters, photo editor, is a professional photographer whose clients include major publications.

“All of our contributors have incredible track records,” says Meadows-Ingram, adding that one of the strengths of Brooklyn Bound is the team’s ability to “apply national magazine know-how to one of the largest local markets in the country.”

That market, they are certain, has a natural affinity for print. “There’s a very big story to tell about the reemergence of print in the last couple of years,” says Meadows-Ingram, citing the buzz generated by nonconformist titles such as Lucky Peach. He believes that “people aren’t turned off by print—they’re attracted to it” because of its permanence and the “time capsule” effect that physical pages impart to words and images.

“People who want print still exist,” Meadows-Ingram observes. “People who don’t want print can go elsewhere.”

The odds against magazine start-ups are long—most new titles fail to achieve a full year of publication before the money dries up or reader interest plays out. But, the odds don’t stop hundreds of new titles from being launched every year, and they haven’t kept Meadows-Ingram and his friends from dreaming of even bigger things for Brooklyn Bound.

“We have a broader mission than just Brooklyn,” he says, noting that from a publisher’s perspective, the borough enjoys national brand recognition as well as home-court advantage. In time, and with luck, that combination could open the door to editorial and advertising from all over the country in the pages of Brooklyn Bound.

After all, as Meadows-Ingram points out, “The New Yorker isn’t just a magazine about New York.”

The “Four Hundred”—and the “Forty-Eight”

During America’s Gilded Age, the acme of the upper crust was the so-called “Four Hundred.” Within this elite circle, it was said, dwelt the people most worth knowing in high society—those who really mattered in the realms of haute style and elegant taste.

The graphic communications industry has a less snooty but no less distinctive “Four Hundred” of its own: the Printing Impressions Top 400, an annual ranking of the leading commercial printing companies in the U.S. and Canada. We were reminded of it by a press release issued recently by Haig Graphic Communications (Hauppauge, NY) proudly noting the company’s inclusion on the 2011 list.

Because the original “Four Hundred” were denizens of New York, we wondered how well represented the region is in the PI rankings. So, we combed the list for firms based in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. What we found was clear evidence of how important a graphic communications manufacturing center and market the three states continue to comprise.

We’re a bit biased, but we believe that the cream of the industry’s equivalent of the “Four Hundred” are right here in the territory served by Metro Graphics Reporter. Together, the 48 firms listed alphabetically below make up an impressive share of the total, accounting for nearly $2.2 billion in sales and employing more than 9,200 people.

Next to each name is its ranking in the 2011 list and its self-reported annual sales (in millions). The PI Top 400 is published in the magazine’s December issue. If you believe that your company should be on it, write to Printing Impressions, Attn: Special Projects Editor, 1500 Spring Garden St., 12th Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19130.

AFL Web Printing (Voorhees, NJ) rank: 93; reported sales: $52.5
American Print Solutions (Brooklyn, NY) 159; $30
arvato AG (New York, NY) 25; $258.9
Barton & Cooney (Burlington, NJ) 371; $9.5
Candid Litho Printing (Long Island City, NY) 170; $28.5
Canfield & Tack (Rochester, NY) 317; $13.02
Cohber Press (Rochester, NY) 284; $15.2
Content Critical (Carlstadt, NJ) 182; $27
Design Distributors (Deer Park, NY) 263; $16.42
DG3 Diversified Global Graphics Group (Jersey City, NJ) 34; $160
Diamond Packaging (Rochester, NY) 86; $57.02
Dolce Brothers Printing (Maywood, NJ) 336; $12
EarthColor (Parsippany, NJ) 28; $242
Edison Litho & Printing (North Bergen, NJ) 159; $30
Evergreen Printing (Bellmawr, NJ) 189; $25
Federal Direct (Clifton, NJ) 207; $23.5
Finlay Printing (Bloomfield, CT) 236; $20
FLM Graphics (Fairfield, NJ) 267; $16.2
Flower City Printing (Rochester, NY) 79; $62.19
Garrison Printing (Pennsauken, NJ) 396; $6.5
Gator Communications Group (Fairfield, NJ) 348; $11.38
Gintzler Graphics (Buffalo, NY) 351; $11
Haig Graphic Communications (Hauppauge, NY) 383; $8.1
Hammer Packaging (W. Henrietta, NY) 52; $94.4
Harty Press (New Haven, CT) 313; $13.42
HighRoad Press (New York, NY) 344; $11.5
Integrated Book Technology (Troy, NY) 243; $19
Integrity Graphics (Windsor, CT) 252; $17.2
KM Media Group (Clifton, NJ) 267; $16.2
L.K. Litho (Middle Island, NY) 61; $82
MacNaughton Lithograph/Command Web Offset (Secaucus, NJ) 33; $163
Maggio Data Forms (Hauppauge, NY) 212; $23
Mercury Print Productions (Rochester, NY) 170; $28.5
Merlin Printing (Amityville, NY) 392; $7.1
National Graphics (N. Branford, CT) 65; $78.3
New Jersey Business Forms/InfoSeal (Englewoood, NJ) 180; $27.5
Paravista Inc. (Piscataway, NJ) 327; $12.6
Paris Business Products (Westampton, NJ) 51; $97
Pictorial Corp. (Carlstadt, NJ) 78; $63.8
Premier Printing and Mailing (Stratford, CT) 371; $9.5
Prestone Printing (Long Island City, NY) 212; $23
Riegel Printing (Ewing, NJ) 269; $16
Sandy Alexander (Clifton, NJ) 44; $114
Tapecon Inc. (Buffalo, NY) 306; $13.9
Trumbull Printing (Trumbull, CT) 318; $13
UNIMAC Graphics (Carlstadt, NJ) 61; $82
Velocity Print Solutions (Middlebury, CT) 269; $16
Zenger Group (Buffalo, NY) 299; $14.16

Pitney Bowes Transforms the Meaning of “Mailing” with Volly and Other New Digital Solutions

Say “Pitney Bowes” (PB) to the man or the lady in the street in a word association test, and the response probably will be “postage meters.” That’s fine with this iconic Fortune 500 company, which has been making the gadgets for more than 90 years and is far and away the world’s largest seller of systems for imprinting postage on mailing pieces.

But, because of displacement by the Internet, the uncertain outlook for the U.S. Postal Service, and other factors shrinking the volume of what postage meters exist to process, the mailstream isn’t the same as it used to be—and neither is Pitney Bowes. Since 2009, the company has been undergoing a strategic transformation aimed at making it less centered upon physical mail and more diversified as a provider of alternative digital delivery services.

Pitney Bowes offered a progress report on its transformation at Global Innovation Day, an event held recently at its world headquarters in Stamford, CT. Originally an internal open house for employees, Global Innovation Day was broadened this year to include briefings for journalists and analysts. The program for the media featured updates on Pitney Bowes solutions for cloud-based mail management, do-it-yourself marketing campaigns with QR codes, and e-commerce for international shippers.

Also on the agenda was Volly, an integrated content delivery and bill payment service that Pitney Bowes first unveiled last year and is readying for consumer rollout at the end of 2012.

Pitney Bowes serves enterprise customers as well as small and medium businesses (SMB), deriving its revenue in equal shares from the two segments. Most of what was presented to the media at Global Innovation Day is targeted at the SMB market as pbSmart™, a suite of cloud-based solutions designed to help small and medium businesses market themselves with the same sophistication as larger companies. Pitney Bowes says that about 30,000 of its customers are now using pbSmart solutions.

The general objective, said Neil Rader, vice president and general manager for SMB, is to migrate the technologies downstream to a point where it becomes easy and desirable for these customers to use them. If embracing digital solutions causes SMB marketers to become less dependent on postage meters and other conventional mailing equipment—as some of the products shown at Global Innovation Day are designed to do—that outcome will not be at odds with the new identity that Pitney Bowes is striving for.

“We are a communications management company,” Rader said, adding that Pitney Bowes has solutions to support the full mix of digital and physical channels its SMB customers typically use.

Road warriors, low-volume mailers, and others who need stamps but not stamp-imprinting equipment can have one without the other by signing up for pbSmartPostage™. The service, described by Pitney Bowes as the first web-based shipping and mailing solution, lets users with an Internet connection output stamps and shipping labels from any printer, wherever they happen to be. Besides eliminating the need for postage meters and trips to the post office, pbSmartPostage also schedules USPS pickups, tracks package delivery, and generate usage reports.

Under monthly pricing plans that are not volume-based, users can replenish their postage accounts online with a credit card. Subscribers also have access to USPS discounts that can save them, according to Pitney Bowes, an average of 8% of their postage costs.

Some of the same functions are built into pbWebConnect™, a product launching this month. pbWebConnect is for business mailers who continue to rely on postage meters but who also want the option of managing their mailing activity online. pbWebConnect makes this possible with the K700 mailstation, a Pitney Bowes meter offering a direct Internet link to the company’s data center.

Once connected, the meter can be accessed remotely through a Web browser, and many of its common functions can be automated—for example, postage account refills, postal rate updates, and alerts for high postage (i.e., over-stamping). Trackability, report generation, and USPS discounts are additional benefits of pbWebConnect.

Like any other vendor of communications management technology, Pitney Bowes appreciates the marketing potential of QR codes. It also acknowledges that QR codes have been slow to catch on at the SMB level, mostly because small businesses don’t fully understand what they can do with 2D barcodes once they’ve generated them. Hence the development of pbSmart™ Codes, introduced last October as an all-in-one solution for building integrated marketing campaigns around customizable QR codes.

The service—entirely cloud-based, and available to try free of charge—builds an end-to-end campaign from code generation and messaging to back-end tracking and analysis. The landing pages are mobile web sites that subscribers can create and modify from templates. Logo-bearing QR codes, encrypting links to coupons, discount offers, and other marketing inducements, can be applied to printed media and to high-visibility promotional items such as mugs and T-shirts. (Pitney Bowes can supply these goods through its relationship with Zazzle, an online retailer of customized consumer products.)

At the back end, pbSmart Codes presents response rates in real time, collects the results of mobile customer surveys, compiles e-mail leads, and saves the data for reference in future campaigns. Pitney Bowes also supplies ScanShot, a multifunction mobile bar code reader available from online app stores.

At Global Innovation Day, the company also promoted its suite of global e-commerce solutions, aimed primarily at U.S. retailers wishing to take the surprises out of fulfilling orders across international borders. Import duties, foreign postage, and other transactions for global shippers are addressed by these solutions.

Easily the most ambitious project in the transformation of Pitney Bowes is Volly. Its objective is to replicate physical mailboxes with virtual ones—not because the company foresees the disappearance of conventional mail delivery, but because it is convinced that consumers also want a digital equivalent that serves the same purpose.

Pitney Bowes says that consumers who can be persuaded to sign up for Volly will find it a friendly and fully secure workspace where, free of charge, they can view and pay bills, organize and archive records, clip coupons, and order things they want—just as they do through the medium of paper mail, but now, minus the clutter and the inconvenience of handling paper.

Within the Volly environment, says the company, a consumer can see and manage all of her opt-in retail relationships in one place. She’s no longer obliged to visit separate Web sites, memorize a corresponding number of passwords, or endure any of the other repetitive drudgeries of uncoordinated online shopping.

Direct-mailing retailers that choose to connect with their customers through Volly are promised benefits of their own, chief among them the opportunity to integrate a paperless channel with their conventional mailstreams. They can continue to send physical mail to customers who prefer paper, but in Volly, they also have a straight path to consumers who are growing comfortable with the idea of shopping with smartphones, tablets, and other e-devices.

When Pitney Bowes first announced Volly in January of 2011, the service did not yet have a critical mass of participation by retailers or consumers. The basic platform existed, but the next step was to build up its transactional capabilities by enlisting the support of third-party providers of billing and mailing services to businesses that sell retail goods and other products to consumers.

With about 50 such partnerships in place, Pitney Bowes believes that Volly now can achieve the density of digital mailing it will need in order to be successful. Using its employees as focus groups, the company also has tested and extensively modified the elements of Volly that consumers will see.

The result is a Volly that finally is ready for general launch in the U.S., which Pitney Bowes says it intends to do in the fourth quarter of this year. B2C partners have come aboard as well, although the company declined to identify them or to say how many have signed on. These brand owners are expected to join Pitney Bowes in promoting Volly to consumers at large.

Those who accept the invitation will be able to aggregate all of their bill-paying within the Volly portal, which Pitney Bowes promises to keep spam-free by permitting communications only from the accounts to which consumers have opted in. Calendars and to-do lists (see screen shot) will help them stay ahead of bills coming due and confirm payments that they have already made—a feature requested by the employee focus groups.

Participating businesses can use Volly to present coupons, catalog offers, and other promotions to consumers through branded landing pages. Fully implemented, the consumer-facing parts of Volly will serve as virtual transpromotional documents that combine billing information with targeted marketing communications as directed by the brand owners.

Reassuring consumers and retailers that they will be in driver’s seats has been a keynote of the project from the beginning. As the launch nears, said Bernie Gracy, vice president of business development for Volly, “we are setting a table between customers and brands that both can have control over.”

Among the first to dine at the table will be citizens and businesses in Australia, where Australia Post, the nation’s postal service, has announced that Volly will be the platform for the Digital Mailbox service it plans to launch later this year. A press release from Pitney Bowes says that the company will provide Australia Post with the software, technology and mailer-integration infrastructure to begin secure, digital delivery of content from business mailers in the Commonwealth.

Shocker! NYS Legislature Actually Prints Things!

Toshiba may have dropped its plans for a national no-print day, but some New York State lawmakers remain on the warpath against paper.

A recent editorial at SILive.com, the online home of the Staten Island Advance, summarizes and applauds these initiatives, endorsing their call to replace printed bills and other hard-copy legislative materials with electronic delivery. At the federal level, the proposed Stop the OverPrinting (STOP) Act of 2011 would require the Public Printer to make bills and resolutions available for the use of offices of members of congress only in an electronic format accessible through the Internet. (This bill was passed by the House of Representatives and is awaiting action by the Senate.)

“Despite the availability and widespread use of this modern technology,” declares the editorial, “the rules insist that all bills being processed in the state Senate and state Assembly must be printed on paper and delivered to their offices, where they often sit for days, unread. (Truth be told, many legislators don’t even read many of these bill thoroughly.)”

But what, we ask, makes it right to blame the printed matter for the lawmakers’ failure to read it? What evidence is there that turning a printed document into an e-mail message or a PDF raises its likelihood of being perused while it’s still timely? Let him who is without backdated clutter in his e-mailbox cast the first stone at print, in legislative chambers or elsewhere.

Something else in the editorial struck us as a bit naïve, especially coming from the online portal of a newspaper: the writer’s tone of apparent incredulity in reporting that “the Legislature actually has its own printing shop within the Capitol building to print and disseminate all this paperwork.”

“Actually”? The writer might want to take a look at compilations by In-plant Graphics of the nation’s largest in-plant printing operations. State-operated printing plants (although not New York’s) are among the leaders in staffing and sales volume.

“Whole forests are destroyed to comply with this quaint and, in this day and age, entirely unnecessary tradition,” the editorial goes on to say in language that Toshiba surely would have found quotable.

There’s probably no realm of government, business, or private life where consuming somewhat less print wouldn’t be a good idea. But attempts to enact outright bans on print are nowhere close to being realistic—even if the online version of a printed newspaper, apparently forgetting the siege its primary medium is under, believes otherwise.

DG3 Digital Marketing Introduces Mobile Engagement Package

The Digital Marketing Group of Diversified Global Graphics Group (DG3) (Jersey City, NJ) has introduced QReach, a mobile engagement package that it says will enable companies to experience the benefits of mobile engagement with QR technology easily and cost-effectively.

The QReach offering is designed to mobilize print communications with QR codes and hosted content at an attractive price. DG3 Digital Marketing is targeting the package at companies that have an interest in, but limited experience with, QR code technology.

The QReach bundle includes branded QR code creation; mobile content deployment; testing across all mobile devices; one full year of content hosting; and data-rich web reporting to track campaign performance. With DG3 as a single-source provider, a company can power its printed materials with mobile engagement under one roof. Key benefits of the bundle are said to include:

• scan rates increased by up to 30% with branded QR codes

• privacy and security ensured in the DG3 private cloud

• improved engagement using mobile optimized content

• same workflow as submitting a print document

• low-cost option that makes materials interactive

Complete details are available at DG3’s digital marketing website. DG3 also offers customized QR and mobile engagement solutions to fit any company’s communications objectives.

Steve Forbes Accepts 26th Prism Award from NYU-SCPS at Record-Setting Event

Steve Forbes (right), chairman and editor-in-chief, Forbes Media LLC, accepts the Prism Award from Mike Federle, COO, Forbes Media LLC.

The graphic communications industry continues to struggle with declining sales, squeezed profit margins, restricted access to capital, and business pressures of every imaginable kind. But, none of that has dampened the enthusiasm of those who support the Prism Awards, a high-profile achievement recognition program that rings with optimism every year under the auspices of New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies (SCPS).

On June 21, the event marked its 26th anniversary with a record turnout and another record for revenue generated on behalf of the M.A. program in Graphic Communications Management and Technology at SCPS. A large part of the draw was the presence of this year’s Prism Award recipient: Steve Forbes, chairman and editor-in-chief, Forbes Media LLC. The ceremony, which took place at Gotham Hall near Herald Square, also featured the presentation of an Alumni Achievement Award to Michael J. Mulligan and a Student Achievement Award to Eunic M. Ortiz.

The Prism Award has been given annually since 1986 in recognition of distinguished leadership in the graphic communications media industry. The Prism Award luncheon is the industry’s longest-running and most successful educational fundraising event, having collected millions of dollars for graphics studies since its inception.

This year’s ceremony was emceed by M.A. program advisory board co-chairs Martin J. Maloney (Broadford & Maloney) and Kathy B. Presto (Williams Lea North America). Prism Award committee chairs were Francis A. McMahon (Océ North America) and Laura C. Reid (Hearst Magazines).

All proceeds from the $750-per-seat event fund scholarships for students enrolled in the M.A. program in Graphic Communications Management and Technology, which has been in existence since 1981. Every year since then, many high-ranking industry executives have served on the M.A. program’s advisory board as curriculum consultants and as providers of internships and career guidance. The program, managed by academic director Bonnie Blake and assistant director Ansley Dunn, also enlists industry professionals as adjunct lecturers.

Enrolled in the cross-disciplinary program are working professionals as well as full-time students, including a significant number of international participants. Topics of study include executive leadership, entrepreneurial thinking, finance, global marketing, managing the media mix, and graphic communication technologies.

Michael J. Mulligan (left), recipient of the Alumni Achievement Award, with Martin J. Maloney, co-chair of the advisory board for the NYU-SCPS M.A. program in Graphic Communications Management and Technology.

Mulligan, the Alumni Achievement Award recipient, credited the program with helping him to reimagine the mission of Advanced Business Group Inc. (ABG), a New York City digital printing company he founded in 1992. Billing itself as the city’s leading digital print provider for business, ABG offers a full range of quick-turnaround production solutions and marketing support services. Mulligan said that attaining an M.A. in the program led him to rethink his role as the CEO of the company that he started and continues to transform.

Accepting the Student Achievement Award, Ortiz described herself as “the epitome of the digital consumer.” Professionally, she is a senior account executive at Fleishman-Hillard, where she develops online, digital, video, and social media campaigns for clients in corporate, government, and technology- related industries. She also has served as a Web, digital, and social media manager for the New York City Council.

Maloney congratulates Eunic M. Ortiz on her receipt of the Student Achievement Award.

Ortiz said that what she wanted in graduate studies “was a program where I could not only learn another level of leadership and management skills, but a program that would be up to date on the work I was involved in daily. I needed a program that could keep up with me.”

“The experience I’ve had while in the Graphic Communications Management and Technology program has exceeded my every expectation,” she declared.

Among the media properties managed by Steve Forbes are the namesake bi-weekly magazine, with a circulation of more than 900,000; the RealClear group of Web sites, including RealClearPolitics.com, which together with Forbes.com are said to reach 33 million readers every month; and 21 local-language licensee editions of Forbes publications for readers around the world.

The Prism Award recipient also has written or co-authored four books and was, in 1996 and 2000, a campaigner for the Republican presidential nomination.

Forbes told the Prism Award audience that while there are few “playbooks” to guide people in their career and life choices, a good education can help everyone to cope with the inevitable uncertainties ahead.

“The true source of wealth in an economy is people’s minds,” Forbes said, adding that the ingenuity of educated people is what gives value to oil, microchips, and other commodities prized by business and society.

He advised the students in the audience to accept the fact that at some point, “a crisis will hit you” during the pursuit of entrepreneurial ambitions. When it hits, he told them, the question to ask is, “What is the purpose of communications? What are you trying to achieve?” With the help of a big-picture focus, Forbes said, “you’ll have a little more serenity—just a little more—in terms of going forward.”

Still an advocate of the political and social changes he called for during his quests for the Republican presidential nomination, Forbes briefly addressed the subject of health care and its future after the Supreme Court’s pending decision on the national health care plan put forth by the Obama administration. According to Forbes, the controversy surrounding the health care debate misses the point.

“Why is the demand for health care seen as a crisis, and not as an enormous opportunity for entrepreneurs?” he asked. “How in the world do we get the patients in charge again, like the consumer is in charge of everything else?” Permitting the purchase of health insurance coverage across state lines would be one way of spurring entrepreneurial competition and “turning scarcity into abundance” in the health care marketplace, Forbes said.

GCSF Celebrates Its 10th Anniversary with Scholarship Grants to 27 Students

First-time and multiple recipients of GCSF scholarships on stage with GCSF trustees in the Joseph Urban Theatre, Hearst Tower, New York City.

“We saw that there needed to be a future workforce for the graphic communications industry, and we saw that we needed to do something about it.”

With that simple but far-reaching plan in mind, Bill Dirzulaitis and the other founding members of the Graphic Communications Scholarship, Award and Career Advancement Foundation (GCSF) set out to finance their vision of a self-sustaining scholarship fund for the industry’s next generation of creative talent. On June 20, GSCF marked the tenth anniversary of the realization of that goal by presenting $40,000 in grants to 27 students commencing or continuing college-level studies in graphic communications.

The presentation ceremony at the Hearst Tower in Manhattan also featured the bestowal of a GCSF Service Award to Dirzulaitis as well as the recognition of Matthew McDowell (Pantone Inc.) as this year’s recipient of GCSF’s Champion of Education Award.

The student scholarship winners either attend or are entering colleges and universities with degree programs in graphic communications. Their areas of study include advertising, design, interactive media, printing, publishing, journalism, digital asset management, and photography.

Conceived by a small group of metro area industry members who wanted to coordinate fundraising for graphics education, GCSF is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit group that channels 100% of the money it raises to scholarships. To date, the group has awarded $313,000 in 94 grants endowed by a long list of graphics industry donors. Most of the 2012 recipients are in their second, third, fourth, or fifth years of qualifying for the stipends.

GCSF has no professional staff and relies entirely on the voluntary efforts of its officers and trustees. Its scholarship selection committee picks recipients by examining their SAT scores, grade-point averages, portfolios, letters of recommendation, and application essays.

GCSF also provides advisement, mentoring, internships and work-study opportunities for students enrolled in graphic studies degree programs at Pratt Institute, New York University, Rhode Island School of Design, The School of Visual Arts, and Carnegie Mellon University, among other institutions. (See video.)

As Pantone’s national sales manager, McDowell has spearheaded that company’s steadfast support for GCSF since its earliest days. In his acceptance remarks, he told the student recipients that in order to stand out among the 720,000 graphic designers now at work in North America, they would have to work hard at building their portfolios, their reputations, and their brands.

“Become lifelong learners,” he said, “and be sure to be proud of your work.” McDowell also urged the recipients to “network, network, network” at the many industry meetings and events where participation by students is welcome.

David Luke (left), president of GCSF, congratulates Matthew McDowell (Pantone Inc.) on his receipt of the foundation’s Champion of Education Award.

“Bill made it happen,” said Mark Darlow, a GCSF founder and trustee, of Dirzulaitis’s leadership in getting the foundation off the ground. Accepting his service award, Dirzulaitis—a president of the New York metro area’s principal trade association for 15 years—said that one of the drivers was the realization that while the industry was changing rapidly, its traditional workforce was aging at the same pace.

Meeting in borrowed space and keeping handwritten records on tablets (the paper kind), the founders raised and distributed $5,000 worth of grants in the first year. They also consolidated a number of existing scholarship funds that were not being actively managed. Since then, said Dirzulaitis, who served as the foundation’s first treasurer, GCSF has raised more than a half a million dollars to underwrite industry education.

Bill Dirzulaitis (left), founding treasurer of GCSF, accepts a Service Award from GCSF trustee Mark Darlow.

GCSF’s present slate of officers includes David Luke (president), Steve Kennedy (vice president), Ellen F. Hurwitch (second vice president), Jerry Mandelbaum (treasurer), Nick Patrissi (secretary), and Richard Krasner (immediate past president). The foundation (www.gcscholarships.org) may be followed on Twitter as @GCSF1.