Index

Final Thoughts

You can never give the printer too much information! No other industry has undergone such a massive technological manufacturing transformation in the last 20 years as the print service industry. With more and more capital investment in equipment, modern workflows, commodity pricing, and extreme turnaround times, not to mention new challenges as geography purchasing becomes far less important, your print provider needs you, their partner, to provide as much information as possible so that your job succeeds in their workflow.

As digital becomes more prevalent, higher in quality, and less expensive, you will be faced with the question of offset versus digital. Understanding the strengths and limitations of each means you will make more effective decisions. Refer to Appendix C for a discussion of printing methodologies.

When your hand-off is to a web developer, be sure you know what they need. Do they need RGB or indexed color? What file formats would they prefer? Understanding the differences between platform system palettes and understanding the various browser support, graphic file formats, and distinctions regarding transparency are imperative when giving hand-offs to with this service provider.

The design of forms goes hand in hand with the capturing of data. You need to work closely with the job function responsible for capturing the data. Collaborating with this job function will help you develop a form that will capture the correct data that can be reused in many a campaign.

A Final Example of the Possibilities of Convergence of Workflow and Content

Consider this example: A retail firm needs to sell an overstock of a specific consumer item. It's late in the day and the product needs to be moved, quickly. Marketing decides to deploy a sales strategy targeted at consumers on their way home from work. It will incorporate a sale price that expires by the end of the evening. How will they get consumers to stop by the store to make a purchase? Perhaps they can use a combination of radio broadcast, opt-in emails, opt-in cell text messaging, and digital billboards found in office buildings. Resources for each of these distribution points are very different:

• Radio broadcasts require copy, an announcer, and perhaps music or sound effects.

• Emails require valid, qualified data; brief, wellformulated content; and format options for wireless devices.

• Cell messaging must quickly and briefly convey sale price and expiration.

• Digital billboards usually support a PDF format but can push content quickly and repeatedly for a specific period of time.