I was very interested seeing this opinion piece by Steve Johnson in Printing Impressions. This is a truncated version here, but you can read it in its entirety at the link, and you should.
The article
“Imagine that when you awake in the morning, your spouse, draws back with a start, exclaiming, ‘“You’re not dead!”’
What a curious thing to say, you think. You brush your teeth, dress and leave the bedroom, only to be greeted by your children chanting, ‘“He’s not dead, he’s not dead!”’ No, you aren’t dead, and you never were, at least not the last time you checked.
How frustrating it is to have your customers exclaim, ‘“We heard that you were dead!”’ Another greets you with a look of genuine puzzlement. ‘“We heard you were dead,”’ he tells you.
Now imagine this scenario repeating itself day-after-day in a Groundhog Day fashion.
You’ve grown so used to this reaction that you begin to preempt people by announcing: ‘“I’m not dead!”’ whenever you enter a room. You now begin your sales pitch by noting, ‘“I’m not dead”’, as though this is your biggest selling point. Prospects who never once implied that you might be dead react, in a startled manner to this unnecessary pronouncement.
A ridiculous scenario? But, isn’t this what the printing business is doing to itself? People are literally using the headline ‘“Print Is Not Dead”’ in articles, posts and marketing collateral, attempting to spark interest in the medium of print”.
—END—
Worth a read by your sales & marketing department, too!
The article
“Imagine that when you awake in the morning, your spouse, draws back with a start, exclaiming, ‘“You’re not dead!”’
What a curious thing to say, you think. You brush your teeth, dress and leave the bedroom, only to be greeted by your children chanting, ‘“He’s not dead, he’s not dead!”’ No, you aren’t dead, and you never were, at least not the last time you checked.
How frustrating it is to have your customers exclaim, ‘“We heard that you were dead!”’ Another greets you with a look of genuine puzzlement. ‘“We heard you were dead,”’ he tells you.
Now imagine this scenario repeating itself day-after-day in a Groundhog Day fashion.
You’ve grown so used to this reaction that you begin to preempt people by announcing: ‘“I’m not dead!”’ whenever you enter a room. You now begin your sales pitch by noting, ‘“I’m not dead”’, as though this is your biggest selling point. Prospects who never once implied that you might be dead react, in a startled manner to this unnecessary pronouncement.
A ridiculous scenario? But, isn’t this what the printing business is doing to itself? People are literally using the headline ‘“Print Is Not Dead”’ in articles, posts and marketing collateral, attempting to spark interest in the medium of print”.
—END—
Worth a read by your sales & marketing department, too!
