Webb: the printing industry -- media and marketing -- will see drop, even after recession ends

Where will the printing business -- which is still part of the media business, believe it or not -- be, when we come to the end of this current economic low phase?

The author is Dr. Joe Webb, not exactly a bringer of good news for printing, but highly informed (read his profile). He offers his thoughts from a site he helped get rolling, WhatTheyThink.com. From my perspective in a variety of parts of the industry, I do not suspect he's far off. I didn't need a big sign to tell me that news media, in the particular ways that I worked in it, was a low-benefit and high-aggravation situation. My various experiences in print media as a whole include major printing companies, news media, marketing and multimedia, business creative, printing services, and technical documentation (recently).

WhatTheyThink Economics & Research Center - Printing Industry Economics, Trends and Research

After all these years, however, there is still the expectation that when the economy turns around that the printing industry will turn around, too. Sorry. That assumption can't be made. Commercial printing shipments, on an inflation-adjusted basis, have been down for seven consecutive quarters, and this current quarter will only make that eight. That's twice as long as the general economic recession. While the economy was growing, we went through a period of 15 consecutive negative quarters a couple of years ago.

Another idea that should be set aside is that that after recession, whenever that is, we will return to "business as usual." I don't know what that means. In practical terms, there really is no such thing. It's important to have fantasies, but this should not be one of them.

The printing industry will be vastly different after the recession ends than it was going into it. This industry always changes, especially in recessions. Unlike those of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and also the 1991 recession, there is no technological change working in our favor that is reducing the total costs of print or expanding the potential market for it. We went through the launch of digital prepress in a recession.

Digital is taking a massive hit on printing companies, just as it is on print news companies, who need to start considering just what they can do to more greatly impact their piece of the digital market. Printing will never die, since one cannot make a paper plane out of a smartphone (yet). But that's about it, it seems!

Last week, Marriott Corporation announced that in its first 100 days of making room reservations available using mobile devices (such as iPhones) it had booked $1.25 million in reservations. We already know that Dell Computer had attributed $1 million in orders over 18 months over Twitter. The company has more than 12,000 Twitter followers and offers them exclusive discounts. Mobile marketing will only be bigger when the recession is over.

The other day, Hearst's legendary publisher Cathie Black said that magazines would start thriving again. She said that's what happened after 1991, and it will happen again. Sorry. Magazine circulation has been flat for nearly 20 years, through booms and busts, even though one would expect that population growth alone (just under +1% per year) would keep a floor under the business. Magazines are in deep trouble.

A lot has changed since I first got into the news business.

Just consider what has changed since 1991, the last real recession we had (and even then it was mild compared to 1981-1982). There was no consumer-driven Internet. There was no Facebook. There was no iPod. There were no e-books. There was really no e-mail. There were no online PDFs. There was no XML. There was no Twitter. No Google. No YouTube. There was no instant messaging. Cell phones were bulky, and they were just phones. There were no worthwhile PDAs. The Mac was seven years old. Windows barely worked.

With regards to Windows -- touche! (If you used Windows in 1991, you might be diluted or forgetful if you think it worked like anything worth bragging about. Windows' weaknesses, not its strengths -- mostly its tie to DOS, thus business operations, via aggressive package sales and marketing -- is what the IT industry seems to have been built upon.)

All of this leads to this essential question: What will the post-recession successful print business look like?

First, it is print process agnostic. That is, it reflects the growing perception among buyers that selection of the print process is no longer critical except in process-exclusive situations. Offset or digital, buyers will consider the selected process as meaningless in their overall decision. Recommending a certain print process over another will become less important, often viewed as complicating a decision unnecessarily.

Keep reading, as he goes on from there. And his three main points run up to this:

Those companies focused only on survival will not make the transition. They are only interested in figuring out how to buy time for themselves using their current business methods, equipment, and ideas. Getting past "survival-only thinking" requires a vision of what clients will need three and five years from now. That's risky because the clients don't even know what that is. That's what the entrepreneurism we need is all about: leadership and creativity.

Being obsessed with survival alone prevents a company from being forward-looking and proactive and can kill the optimism of employees and management. Reposition and restructure the print business now; get out of survival mode as quickly as possible. Obsessing over survival alone is counterproductive and is a sign of larger problems.

- Jon O

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