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Political print requirements are notoriously variable, but Paul Sorkin has devised a system that ensures consistency and accountability across the whole country

When Gordon Brown finally decides to call an election and the war of words kicks off in earnest, one of David Cameron’s most potent weapons won’t be sat debating the key issues on BBC’s Question Time, nor will he berate the opposition in the House of Commons.

Chances are that he will be so busy that he will rarely get the opportunity to leave the Conservative Party’s Millbank HQ. He will remain one of the election’s anonymous, unsung heroes – a cog in the political wheel whose job it is to ensure that Cameron’s message gets across to the electorate loud and clear.

So who is this mystery figure? His name: Paul Sorkin, his occupation: head of print and design for the Conservative Party. When the election is called, Sorkin will go into overdrive to ensure that millions of printed messages are delivered in the right manner to the right people at the right time.

In his nine years with the party, he’s already overseen two general elections and last year, he almost oversaw a third as the nation teetered on the brink while Gordon Brown weighed up the odds before deciding against the move at the last minute. (By the time Brown revealed his intentions, Sorkin’s team had already punched the green light on its election plan – more of which later).

Unmatched experience
While the outcome of the election is not a forgone conclusion, when it comes to print, rival parties will struggle to match Sorkin’s wealth of knowledge and experience. He’s worked in the printing industry in one capacity or another for more than for 44 years now, starting out on the shopfloor using platen machines.

In addition to operating the presses, he’s worked in sales, for suppliers and has been a print buyer for the past 20 years – prior to joining the Conservative Party, he worked for the AA in Basingstoke.

When he came on board, one of his first tasks was to sort out the erratic manner in which the party was buying print. Historically, the party had used its own printing facility in Reading but the decision was taken to close it as it wasn’t core to the organisation.

“When the Reading plant closed, it became a bit of a free-for-all,” explains Sorkin. “People were buying print in a haphazard manner. For instance, some people were doing the same mailing to the same people twice. My job was to come in and commercialise the operation.”

Radical overhaul
Importantly, early on, he changed the whole structure of buying print for general elections. Under the existing structure, people were buying print from disparate sources and as a result there was no price comparison. “By looking at it from a different perspective, I knew that we would be able to save a lot of money,” says Sorkin. His grand idea was to regionalise the process – find a team of 20 printers spread across the nation who would each be allocated a part of the country and undertake work for constituencies in their area. The printers would be supplied with approved templates from the party HQ and then all the constituencies needed to do was go to them with their bespoke artwork and words.

“We set a price structure with the printers and gave the constituents a price list to work with,” explains Sorkin. “This way the constituencies knew what they should be paying and the printers knew what they could charge.”

However, he knew his idea would only work to a certain extent because the big difference between the Conservative Party and its rivals is that its constituencies are autonomous – Sorkin could encourage them to use this resource, but ultimately he had no control over where the constituencies spent their money. Another fly in the ointment was that the printers were spending a lot of time and effort doing the final artwork for constituencies and this all added to the overall print cost.

So he decided to take a different tack. He looked at software systems that would enable constituencies to create their own print-ready jobs, but he quickly established that installing one would cost too much money and due to the autonomy, there were no guarantees that anyone would use it.

Sorkin realised that his best bet lay in the hands of a print management company, so in 2006, he embarked on a search to find a suitable partner. “I looked at most of the top print management companies and it was a close run thing between three of them, but TPF Group eventually came out on top because of their can do attitude and their approach to customer service. Anything that we wanted was there immediately and it was always well produced.”

Consistent design
Another deciding factor was TPF’s artwork template system, subsequently christened “Concept” by Sorkin. Under this system, customers can log into a website, call up an approved template then drop in copy and pictures. The system instantly produces the final artwork in the form of a PDF and this can then be printed either directly by TPF or a third party.

This flexible approach won Sorkin over so in September 2006, the Conservative Party signed a four-year deal with TPF to handle its print function. Another advantage of the deal was that TPF has an online ordering system so Sorkin can input the job spec himself and get instant quotes. And given the size of the party’s in-house print and design team, which numbers Sorkin and two designers, the arrangement saw Sorkin double the size of his team in one fell swoop as TPF dedicated three people to look after the account.

Sorkin admits that TPF’s role is particularly demanding due to the party’s erratic buying patterns. Run lengths can be anywhere in the tens right through to millions and while May is usually a busy month due to local elections and the run-up to the party conference in October is also pretty frenetic, throughout the summer months and the Parliament recess it is always a quiet period. However, when an election is called, demand goes “through the roof”, according to Sorkin.

This was the case last October following the ‘false alarm election’. Sorkin says that the dry run worked really well. “As soon as we went into election mode, TPF immediately doubled the team of three. We were ready to run with a lot of items and it gave them a taste of things to come. When the election does happen, they now know exactly what pressures they will be under.”

TPF agreed to adopt Sorkin’s regional print buying election model so when Brown does finally name the day it will be business as usual for him – to a certain extent at least. “They have utilised the system that is already in place, but now they are handling all of the administration and they are also giving us extra manpower and buying power. As a result, they are saving us a substantial amount of money.”

Ultimately, the good news for printers and for TPF is that Sorkin and the Conservative Party are committed to a printed future. “I don’t think print will die out,” he says. “When the internet came in people said print’s dead, but it’s still with us and it’s going to be with us for a long time to come.”

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THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY
• The Conservative Party is the second largest political party in the UK in terms of sitting Members of Parlia­ment, the largest in terms of public membership, and also the nation’s oldest political party. It is also the most successful political party in British history in terms of election victories

• The origins of the Conservative Party can be traced to the ‘Tory’ faction which emerged in the later 17th century. This ‘Tory Party’ established a secure hold on government between 1783 and 1830, first under the Younger Pitt and then Lord Liverpool

• The party has a strong track record of using print to its advantage. One of the most memor­able billboard posters in recent years was Saatchi & Saatchi’s infamous “Labour isn’t working” tagline which accompanied a picture of a snaking line of unemployed people

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CASE STUDY
Back Boris
To describe the Conservative Party’s print buying patterns as “erratic” would be a major understatement. Paul Sorkin, the party’s head of print and design, says that a recent job typifies the nature of the work it undertakes on a regular basis.

Earlier this year, he was asked to produce an A5 leaflet as part of Boris Johnson’s campaign to become Mayor of London. The leaflet focused on Johnson’s efforts to tackle crime in the capital. The artwork for the leaflet was partly designed by an agency and partly in-house.

An initial run of 40,000, which was printed and delivered by TPF in under 24 hours, proved to be such a resounding success that the following day another order of 300,000 was placed. These were turned around within 48 hours and then Johnson’s campaigners requested a further 1.5m - the order was placed on a Tuesday and delivered on the Friday. All in all, Sorkin says that TPF’s role in this was “very impressive”.

“We gave them the final artwork and told them what we wanted and when we wanted it for and they knocked it out for us and gave us a very good price,” he adds.