However, the print supply chain these days is an ever-more amorphous beast, with printers successfully delivering communications in a range of other media. Which poses a dilemma for the print managers: should they also be branching out and, if so, are print, or rather media, managers necessarily as valuable to a cross-media supply chain as to print?

Certainly print managers’ presence may soon become as ubiquitous where digital services are being sold as within the print supply chain. With print volumes reduced and cross-media work increasingly the marketing medium of choice, many printers have realised the profit-making potential of branching into offering email campaigns, data management and SMS offerings. And where there’s money to be made, print managers are understandably never too far behind. 

So what function should a good cross-media manager be performing to add value?

Lance HiIl, group sales and marketing director at print and cross-media solutions provider 4DM, says that most helpful would be for print managers to source and delegate digital work in a similar way that they do for print.

A good print manager, he says, will open doors to clients that the printer might not have time to court, and win longer contracts than the printer might have gained otherwise. They can also have a positive impact on the effective running of a business, he says, using their knowledge and expertise to advise and push for greater efficiencies.

But the most crucial element to any good media managing outfit, reports Hill, is knowledge. And though print managers typically have an extensive understanding of print these days, Hill says many are less clued-up about electronic media.

"The problem is that some print managers don’t have the cross-media knowledge so are just not then confident enough to go and put it in front of the client," he says.

Lack of expertise
Kevin Stewart, sales director at multichannel marketing provider MBA Group, agrees that some print managers currently just don’t have the expertise to effectively sell cross-media. He cites this as a major reason why printers may have been slower than expected in jumping on the cross-media bandwagon.

"Electronic media hasn’t taken off in the industry as well and as soon as it should have done, and I believe that it’s due to a lack of knowledge in the support industries like creative agencies and print management companies," he says. "I think if they invested a bit more time and put their hands up and said we don’t know but we need to learn, that would help move things forward."

Stewart reports that this lack of knowledge means that most print managers will just avoid the topic entirely.

"Print managers sell themselves on providing an advisory service," he says. "So when they’re not the experts in an area they won’t go back and ask someone else, they’ll just shy away from that campaign in the first place, as it could damage their reputation."

The result for many printers-come-digital-solutions providers of this reluctance to engage in cross-media by the print managers is less work, or work that is much harder to come by. This is because, says Hill, while a printer gets its print work for a certain client through a print manager, the client won’t be receptive to talking to them directly. This means that the printer will have to go round the houses and expend a lot of time and effort to even suggest the idea.

"The only way we’re finding we can get through to clients is to find out who the creative agency is that works for the client and talk to them," he says. "You might find the agency go and sow the seed to the client and then the client comes back and says we’ve seen this is a good idea, do any of your suppliers do this? And then hopefully the print manager will finally get you involved, but clearly that’s a very long way round."

Some print managers don’t have a confidence problem when it comes to cross-media, of course, but having too much confidence can be just as big a problem, especially when it means they suddenly believe that they can provide the cross-media services themselves. This, says Hill, can be just as detrimental to the interests of the printer-come-cross-media supplier, and of course the end-client.

"What you’ll find is they may think they have the expertise," he says, "but they don’t have the experience handling the data, they don’t have developers who understand working with data compliance databases, data-driven solutions like
we do."

This usually results in the print manager wanting to partner with the printer on the campaign after about six months of going it alone, reports Hill. But by this time the damage may have been done. A poorly executed campaign often means the digital contract goes elsewhere.

Mark Gray, director of Real Print Management, counters that some print managers, such as his company, can do cross-media successfully in-house, cutting out the printer. He adds that as a direct relationship between the client and cross-media provider is most ideal, there’s a high chance in the future that more and more print managers will offer cross-media in-house rather than passing it on. 

He would, therefore, advise that printers looking to sell direct into the cross-media space would do well to ensure that clients realise, through good branding and general marketing, that a printer can compete with companies like his on consultative prowess and digital know-how.

"I think printers in this situation might need to look at the position the print manager enjoys and reposition themselves to occupy it," he says. "It really goes back to some of the problems printers face of being commoditised and seen as producing outcomes that you can get anywhere. They need an image overhaul to communicate that they can provide expert advice too."

That’s not to say all print managers are looking to take work off the printers or are ignoring the issue completely. Kevin Dunckley, digital media director at global brand campaign management company HH Global, argues that there are companies out there that can offer just as effective management of cross-media campaigns as they can for print.

"At HH Global, we hire people because they have a strong knowledge in this area," he says. "We have a digital team with data handling experts, so any cross-media opportunity will be dealt with by them."

As a result of this knowledge, HH Global can then, says Dunckley, perform the true function of the good print or cross-media manger: bringing a different set of sales and account management skills to the table and building a trusted enough image to attract prestigious clients.

But Dunckley would also argue that this aspect of media management is even more crucial to the success of the tendering of a digital campaign than it is to a print job. New media is, he explains, a sector where image really matters and media managers have more time and resources to create a company profile that matches more closely the cutting-edge, media-savvy image that clients have in mind when looking for a digital provider.

Of course, there are also those who would counter that print suppliers can in fact deliver on all of these knowledge, consulting and branding fronts and that, actually, a print manager in the cross-media space is a hindrance that should be avoided.

Different approach
This is certainly the view of Andy Bailey, director of client strategy and insight at print and electronic marketing provider Inc Direct. He says that the nature of electronic media services and likelihood that the client will not be as well versed in all of the available products as with print, means that a different kind of consultation process is required.

"What we do as a company is, when someone comes to us about a cross-media offering, we do a lot of challenging and questioning of what they think they want," he says.

For Bailey, this highly consultative process, with ideas going back and forth, could just never work as well with someone in the middle relaying the messages each time, no matter how knowledgeable they were.

But for those printers without the resource or inclination of Bailey to match the service and time allocation of a print management company, a middle man is always going to be required to sell cross-media services. In order to make that sales conduit useful and effective, it may be that printers have to help print managers out by giving them a nudge in the right direction with some cross-media training. Sure, some may well try to cut the printer out, but the majority of print managers will operate with cross-media in the same way as they do print, as the printer’s friend, not enemy.

A Day in the Life of a Print Manager

Glowing red eyes, scaly tail and pitchfork in hand: how a print manager should look if some accusations are to be believed. But, with his warm smile, jaunty pink shirt and tendency to punctuate all interactions with a cheery "jolly good, jolly good", Tim Fitzgerald, business development director at CDP Print Management, doesn’t fit this bill at all.

In fact, he is disappointingly likeable when he greets me on a dreary January morning at Bedford Station. It’s okay, though, because we have a whole day of me shadowing him to meetings ahead of us. Sooner or later, he or a client is bound to expose his dastardly ways…

Or not. In fact, right from our first meeting, the myth about print mangers being a bunch of ruthless penny-pinchers, superficially absorbing other people’s print know-how and then forcing printers to deliver dirt-cheap jobs, starts to be dispelled. Bedford Pilgrims Housing Association’s Philippa Sillis certainly has no complaints.

"With CDP, we have a relationship with someone who we can have a conversation with," says Sillis, whose organisation has been working with CDP since 2009 for the provision of their service statements, booklets, banner stands, tenant handbooks, stationery, quarterly newsletter and magazine, and online ordering system. "When you deal direct with suppliers they tend to just provide what you ask for, whereas Tim is always able to offer us some advice."

A classic example of this, says Sillis, is the housing association’s tenant handbooks. Fitzgerald’s knowledge of the wide range of products on the market meant, she explains, that he was able to suggest a ring-bound folder to solve their problem of tenants having nowhere to keep loose documents.

"It sounds like an obvious solution," says Sillis, "but we’d just never seen a product like that before."

It’s not the case that companies like CDP necessarily have superior knowledge to printers, clarifies Fitzgerald, it’s just that, having the execution of the job to oversee, direct suppliers are bound to have a slightly narrower focus.

"We’re not focused on filling a machine or offering a certain kind of product," says Fitzgerald, "so we can look at what the client is doing and how we might be able to move them forwards strategically."

Welcome advice
This focus on an organisation’s overall print and marketing strategy becomes apparent when Fitzgerald gets to the main reason behind the meeting, of suggesting the organisation consider using PURLs to gain feedback from their users.

Although she says this is not something the association would look at for a year or so, Sillis seems pleased once again that Fitzgerald has brought something new to the table, something she might not have considered otherwise. She is also pleased that she doesn’t have to carry out this research herself and interrogate four or five suppliers for each service. Her time is money, she explains, and money of course is in short supply these days.

The advantage of using a print manager for an organisation like BPHA is, then, clear to see. But what about CDP’s suppliers?

Our next stop, to check a job at labelling manufacturers Lattice Labels, goes someway to answering this query.

Although he recognises that his business model might not best-suit every print company, owner Jeremy Roberts says that for Lattice, getting 100% of their work from print management companies brings in more business than they would otherwise get, and helps them to cut costs.

"If you think that each salesperson might be paid £50,000, then not having a sales team saves us a lot of money," says Roberts. "Also, we supply 12,000 different companies- we wouldn’t be able to make or maintain contact with anywhere near that number on our own."

Roberts warns, however, that the success printers enjoy working with print management companies will depend on how knowledgeable that print manager is.

With a background as business manager of direct mail at John Dickinson Stationery, Fitzgerald can certainly claim to have this. He relates an anecdote about having to personally unwind and rewind print rolls for a client while working for CDP, when a client’s incorrect specification meant that it ended up on the roll the wrong way round. Clearly Fitzgerald’s printing know-how is not just skin-deep.

But what about the cross-media services such as email campaigns, web-to-print services and PURLs, CDP has made considerable inroads into over the past four years? Do print managers have the expertise here?

Fitzgerald responds that certainly any print manager branching into this area has got to gain a thorough knowledge about handling data, as he has. Only then, he says will they be able to add value once again by being a one-stop shop for clients, and by checking the quality of their data before it is handed onto the provider and it is too late to resolve any problems.

Our next and last visit of the day confirms that, as far as the success of CDP’s consultative approach, knowledge really is power.

Here, at a Watford-based loans company, it is Fitzgerald’s in-depth understanding of the financial services sector and the challenges it faces, that sees Fitzgerald gain executive Sam Friedel’s trust.

CDP already handles the company’s direct mail and client statements, and Fitzgerald wants to see if he can pique their interest in an online mail ordering system, web-to-print system and email campaigns with PURLs. In order to do this, he offers to do some secret shopping for Friedel, demonstrating his ability to get involved not only in sourcing print and digital providers, but also with dictating their marketing strategy using his knowledge of their sector.

Many printers and digital providers, explains Fitzgerald as we leave, simply do not have the time to gain such an in-depth knowledge of all the sectors CDP deals with, including financial services, housing associations, healthcare, aerospace and transport.

And so they often don’t, in his opinion, build up the same level of trust with clients, crucial he says when, "everything we do on a day-to-day basis is about trust".

Capable of gaining such trust, then, it seems that no matter how the behaviour of their less knowledgeable counterparts might lead them to be demonised, print managers like CDP that are certainly adding value for clients, are here to stay.