Download State of the Industry

JANUARY 2014 | VOLUME 52, NUMBER 1
INDUSTRY TRENDS
FOR 2014
InfoTrends outlines five
trends for the new year
Page 34
PROTECT YOUR
CUSTOMER’S BRAND
Tips to ensure
brand consistency
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State of the Industry:
Powerful
Voices
We gave eight industry leaders an "open mic."
Their powerful words might surprise you.
Page 22
CONTINUED HEAD
State of the Industry:
Powerful
Voices
Where is the industry heading? We gave an "open mic"
to eight industry pros, and their words are powerful. What
concepts will resonate with your business?
22 | PRINT SOLUTIONS | JANUARY 2014 | PSDA.ORG
W
hen we interview industry professionals or overhear conversations at
event receptions, one concept keeps coming up: the need to listen to
customers before suggesting answers.
It’s a simple but smart strategy. Nothing about it is novel; everything
about it is necessary.
In this industry, a “solution” isn’t really a solution unless the company providing it truly
understands what the customer needs. Listening is the key — without pretense, without
interruption, without a quick jump to promotion.
This magazine wanted to take the same approach with this story. This year, rather than
provide our own take on the “state of the industry,” we wanted to share yours — straight
from several industry minds to the printed page. It’s our nod to the notion that it’s
important to take pause, invite perspective and truly listen.
The industry is yours, and so is this story. Enjoy the broadcast.
The Voice
The Message
Robert O'Connell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Smarter Solutions
Equal Better Results
Jeffrey Hayzlett . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Don’t Fear Failure
Sarah Scudder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . We’re Really Selling Time
Rich Stienstra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Consider Your Future Value
Nathan Goldberg . . . . . . . . .Listen, Think, Invent and Create
Doug Traxler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Empower Salespeople
with Tools and Trust
Mark Trumper . . . . . . . . . . . . Customers Are Different Now
Sanja Djurik. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Big Data Is the Future
CONTINUED HEAD
Smarter Solutions
Equal Better Results
BY ROBERT O’CONNELL
A
s I stare out my window at
the Empire State Building,
I reflect on a year of
extraordinary change at
Vanguard Direct. We are in the midst of
yet another transformation that positions
us as solutions providers in the area of
digital communications. The wonderful
surprise in 2013, however, was the
resurgence in print activities that resulted
in our first growth year since the financial
collapse in 2008.
Much of my time for the past few years
has been spent honing our staff ’s skills
in digital areas, such as mobile apps,
web development, content management
and social media. Managing “big
data” is emerging as the single biggest
challenge for our clients. Our industry
will need to be proficient in these digital
areas, in addition to print services,
to properly serve them. We can view
digital technologies as competition, or
we can be a true resource to our clients
by providing the appropriate solution
to a communication challenge. We
should also recognize that the often-used
term “integrated solution” is becoming
a reality. We now have to be able to
provide solutions that communicate
across multiple channels in a way that
complements each of the channels. And
yes, that includes print.
The real value of our industry is the
ability to provide a business solution
that helps our clients’ bottom line. The
execution of it is the reward we get for
developing the solution. We are doing
this at Vanguard by becoming strategists
to our clients rather than providers of
24 | PRINT SOLUTIONS | JANUARY 2014 | PSDA.ORG
goods and services.
To achieve this, we
needed to have some
key people on staff
who possessed the
skills for all the types
of projects we’d
begun taking on:
creative directors,
technologists and
project managers.
In some cases, our
outside partners
and vendors serve
as the subjectmatter experts
as well.
We’ve also focused on becoming
better project managers. Working on
projects with higher complexities,
longer life cycles and bigger dollars
requires it. As part of this, we’ve spent
significant resources in developing a
project management playbook and sent
many of our staff members to project
management training. The playbook has
become a vital document that informs
project managers of the minimum
required effort and documentation
for a project. It’s simply a tool that
has useful information to help start a
project properly and monitor it through
execution. The manual includes sample
documents, such as status reports, change
requests and jeopardy reports.
We see this function as the glue that
holds all other activities together and
ensures a profitable project result —
certainly not a given in the digital arena,
with “scope creep” being the uninvited
team member that can erode profit.
Sound project management is critical
to the success of any project, and we
believe that it is key to our future success.
Technologies will change and our clients’
needs will change, but the need to project
manage will not.
Printing activities are alive and well again
at Vanguard. We increased our print
business substantially in 2013 as a result
of our consultative approach. Whether or
not this is a fleeting thing remains to be
seen, but it’s clear that print still plays a
vital role in our clients’ communication
efforts. We will continue to position
ourselves to provide “Smarter Solutions
and Better Results” so that we remain
relevant to our clients.
Robert O'Connell is president and CEO
of Vanguard Direct in New York City. Visit
www.vanguarddirect.com.
CONTINUED HEAD
Don't Fear
Failure
BY JEFFREY HAYZLETT
I
mostly hate change. I like the
same routines, the same meals,
my toothbrush in the same place,
my keys on the same table. But life
doesn’t work that way, and neither should
your business.
Business leaders are creatures of habit,
but it’s important for us all to realize
that change usually doesn’t hurt. I mean,
really, who is going to die? Changing
something might be inconvenient, but
there’s usually something valuable to
gain, and it makes the effort to constantly
tweak and improve worthwhile.
When I asked my friend Linda Sawyer,
North American CEO of Deutsch Inc.,
how she inspires her team to change, she
said, “The most effective way to spread
and fuel inspiration with your team is by
making everyone feel that part of their
job description is being a change agent.”
I love that.
Then, Linda added that what helps her
team members drive that change is her
allowing them to be fearless and not
afraid of failure. She said, “If you don’t
take risks, experiment or empower
people to put themselves on the line, you
will never innovate, advance or evolve.” I
love that even more!
As a distributor, manufacturer or supplier,
every one of your people should have this
mentality. Don’t you want them to?
Being fearful gets in the way of success
and taking those chances. In this
industry, change is the thing you should
be the same about. You should constantly
try to break something and improve it.
Can you trim a second? Can you get
another percentage of margin? Can you
redeploy a resource to another area? Can
you better serve a client with Jim instead
of Joe? Generally speaking, I think more
leaders should be rolling up their sleeves
and cleaning carpets and bathrooms.
Miles Young, chief executive officer at
Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, recently
said to me, “Fear of failure is the single
most creative force in business. The
difficulty, though, is being fearful.
People — and business owners in
particular — develop layers of complacent
insulation, self-justification, and pain
avoidance, which come as an unfortunate
concomitant of just surviving in their jobs.”
You aren’t just about printed products,
so what other things can you provide?
By and large, what most distributors
are doing is providing a service. You
might be solving an inventory problem
or getting marketing materials to people
in a timely manner. What else can you
provide? The key is to branch out
and make changes.
failure is not an option if you are Gene
Kranz, the flight director of the failed
Apollo 13 mission to the moon, and
you have only a few hours to get your
astronauts home safe. But you’re not
Kranz — no one is going to die! Failure
can drive your team to success if your
team is unafraid of the consequences of
acting fearlessly.
In other words, don’t let your people act
out of fear and hold back that little extra,
and don’t you do it either. If they can’t do
it when you’re changing and encouraging
them to think big, they never will.
Jeffrey Hayzlett, former chief marketing
officer at Kodak and vice president of its
Graphic Communications Group, is CEO
of The Hayzlett Group and host of the
Bloomberg TV show “C-Suite with Jeffrey
Hayzlett.” His two books are “The Mirror
Test: Is Your Business Really Breathing?”
and “Running the Gauntlet: Essential
Business Lessons to Lead, Drive Change,
and Grow Profits.”
Putting up with the status quo
is a death knell. John Favalo,
managing partner at Eric Mower
and Associates, thinks there are
six dirty words in business: “We’ve
always done it that way.” Like him,
I believe breakthrough is often the
reward for risk. It’s important to
challenge your people to be the
creative dynamos they can be.
In business, there’s nothing
wrong with mistakes. Sure,
PSDA.ORG | JANUARY 2014 | PRINT SOLUTIONS | 25
CONTINUED HEAD
We’re Really
Selling Time
BY SARAH SCUDDER
On I receive a response like this,
Once
I kknow the executive has bought in.
My sale is no longer a sale. It is now a
business-consulting job. I determine how
bu
a ssystem can best be built to consolidate
ordering print and supplies from multiple
or
vendors into one, easy-to-use B2B
ve
platform. My plan is implemented. The
pl
executive is pleased.
ex
I
sell time. I find some of the busiest
people at a company — the CEO,
CMO, CFO or chief procurement
officer — and with numbers,
graphs and mathematical formulas, get
them to evaluate what their team’s time
is worth. Most are surprised by the cost
of each hour, day and year. Then I ask
the question: “If you could implement a
system that would free up 95 percent of
your team’s time, what would it be worth
to you?”
“A lot.”
“Priceless.”
26 | PRINT SOLUTIONS | JANUARY 2014 | PSDA.ORG
The print industry is no longer
Th
product based. It is a customized
p
ttechnology solutions industry in which
ccustomizable systems are required to
compete. Customized ordering sites
have become the norm. Every company
I competed against in 2013 to win a
new account offered a B2B ordering
platform. The ordering system put us
all on the same playing field. To elevate
my company above the competition,
I conduct a thorough analysis to
determine a prospect’s true needs.
Then I work with my programming
team to determine how we can build a
system that solves those problems. In short,
our solution is a system that is customized
for the prospective client. Adopting a
system to each client’s unique needs is hard
work and takes time. However, I care about
my clients, so the time is well worth it. I am
happy when they are happy. Their success is
a direct reflection on my competence.
The real value to a customer is that a system
is freeing up time and internal resources so
a team can focus more on profit-increasing
activities. Companies not only care about
the products they are ordering, they also
care about how the products are ordered.
They care that the ordering and accounting
process saves time.
A bit of irony: It is my belief that the
print industry is no longer in the print
industry. The term print industry is
limiting. By its very name, it causes
people to assume we sell printed
products. Sure, my system allows people
to order a printed item, but that is not
its essence. Value is. Companies seek to
consolidate and order much more than
print from a website. Executives desire,
and now should demand, one site for
employees to order all of their supplies.
I have expanded my system. I now offer
all commodity items, ranging from
office supplies to smallwares to first-aid
items. Other systems I sell are primarily
electronic based and don’t involve the
purchase of a physical product.
The key to what our industry offers is
efficiency. Companies in our space have
started to branch out and create their
own industry titles, such as marketing
services, brand delivery services,
managed services or supply chain/
logistics.
What is the future of the print industry?
I believe the future is now if we
remember that we are no longer in the
print industry. Offering a customized
technology solution is the key. Caring
about your clients is essential.
Sarah Scudder is a principal and the
chief growth officer for The Sourcing
Group (TSG), a technology-focused print
management company.
CONTINUED HEAD
Consider Your
Future Value
BY RICH STIENSTRA
I
n 1983, three years after I launched
my business, I bought a small
company here in the Chicago area
from a guy who was looking to
retire. The industry was a bit different
back then — forms design was a
differentiator and a passion of mine.
Our ability to consult with customers
and provide business printing solutions
helped us grow sales and build value in
our firm.
The acquisition turned out to be a good
move for us, and over time, we bought
two other distributors so we could
diversify into commercial printing and
promotional products.
I’m now 65 years old, with two bright
sons who have worked with me at our
company for more than a decade. Lately
I’ve been thinking about the topic of
succession planning in our industry. We
have a plan in place here at BRIDGE® ,
but I know a lot of people my age and
slightly older don’t have an exit strategy.
For those businesses — and actually,
for everyone in the industry, no matter
your age — it’s important to consider the
current and future value of your business.
What’s it worth? What could you do this
year to improve its profitability? If you’re
looking to retire or sell your business,
how can you make it more attractive to a
potential buyer?
I remember what it was like to be on the
buying side. We treated it a bit like dating.
We looked for distributors who shared the
same value and need for mutual trust —
ones who were slightly different from us,
but not too different that we couldn’t get
along or understand each other.
I also know what it’s like to be on the
side where you’re concerned about your
company’s value. In 2003, BRIDGE®
faced a major upheaval. Seemingly all of a
sudden, we had gone from a $1.8 million
distributor that serviced just under 3,000
travel agents nationwide to a $490,000
distributor that was struggling to right
the ship. That niche industry went into
the tank after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks — everyone seemed to stop
traveling, conventions were called off
and small travel agents just fell off the
table. Meanwhile, sites like Travelocity
and Orbitz were coming into the fore,
transferring much of the service work to
consumers themselves.
interested in taking it over, and maybe
you’re too small to attract the attention of
industry consolidators.
If so, my encouragement is to get
proactive. Maybe find another small
to mid-sized distributor who would be
interested in purchasing your company,
or merging with you, or partnering with
you to go after new business. It might
not take as long as you think to get your
financial house in order. Instead of going
down with the ship, take the wheel (or
have someone else take it), and don’t let
all the hard work you’ve put in over the
years go to waste.
Rich Stienstra is president of BRIDGE®
Printing & Promotional Products Inc. in
Palatine, Ill. Visit www.bridgeprinting.com.
We had to do a lot of soul searching,
and quickly. Rather than continuing to
rely on traditional products, we made
the decision to become a graphic arts
communication company that specialized
in three things: business printing,
commercial printing and promotional
printing. We slowly began the process of
re-growing the business.
Today, promotional products account
for 55 percent of our annual sales, and
commercial printing accounts for 35
percent. If we hadn’t diversified right
then and there, we would be out of
business today.
If you’re a distributor and you feel like
you’re kind of just hanging on, what’s
your next move going to be? It can be
a tricky spot — perhaps there’s no one
PSDA.ORG | JANUARY 2014 | PRINT SOLUTIONS | 27
CONTINUED HEAD
Listen, Think,
Invent and Create
BY NATHAN GOLDBERG
W
I speculate that clients are tired of
hearing the same rhetoric around
pricing and service, and while pricing
and service are important (some
clients believe those aspects are most
important), the client may not have the
ability to see what is really important.
That’s where we come in. We have to
bring solutions to potential breakdowns
the customer hasn’t even anticipated yet.
When you bring these solutions to the
table, you gain expert positioning, and
then price isn’t even a blip on the radar.
What we have to do is listen, think,
invent and create. We have to listen
to the narratives our clients are
speaking, keeping in mind each person’s
background and point of view. We must
then think about those narratives, which
isn’t easy. When was the last time you
sat down to think about a problem or
opportunity and tried to invent or create
a solution? Inventing and creating is no
longer part of the daily routine for most
people.
Specialized Office Systems is not
concerned about what tangible “products”
we’re selling to the client. Instead,
we’re organized around the results and
benefits we enable our clients to achieve
as a result of a mutually beneficial
business relationship.
The men and women I have met through
the PSDA are entrepreneurs in the
greatest sense of the word. We all may
have started out years ago with the same
(or similar) strategy and products, but
after all these years, most companies
look dissimilar today. Many focus on
different products, are located in different
areas, have different “go-to-market”
strategies, etc. We have adapted our
strategies and target markets to
benefit ourselves, our families and
our stakeholders. We appreciate
opportunities to learn and create.
If my company was just a “printing”
company, out there trying to sell
printing based on price alone, I would be
concerned about the state of this industry.
But if you’re an entrepreneurial company
like we are — one that brings solutions
(not the lowest price) to your clients and
prospects, then I would be extremely
positive on our industry. Few people are
actually inventing or creating solutions
that take care of customers concerns.
Many companies are simply memorizing
what others have done and trying to
make that work for different clients. But
few people are thinking creatively and
actually inventing solutions.
here is our industry
going? Is there an app for
that? Perhaps Google has
a map?
To assess where the industry is going, we
must first define what industry we’re in.
Some call themselves a printing company,
while others consider themselves a
broker, manufacturer, marketing services
provider or something else. I see my
company as a procurement partner for
our clients and prospects.
I have learned over the years there
is always someone willing to sell
a product for less than I want to.
Sometimes that product is inferior
to mine, and sometimes the
competitor is just willing to do
the work for a lower margin than
our company. These people are
doing a disservice to themselves
and the marketplace. Using
low pricing to win clients is
shortsighted — they aren’t able to offer
real value to the customer.
28 | PRINT SOLUTIONS | JANUARY 2014 | PSDA.ORG
I see a bright future for my company,
my staff, my customers and myself. The
possibilities are literally endless, as long
as we take care of our client’s concerns
and bring them real, tangible value.
Nathan Goldberg is president of
Specialized Office Systems, based in
Phoenix. Visit www.SOSsystems.com.
CONTINUED HEAD
Empower
Salespeople with
Tools and Trust
BY DOUG TRAXLER
T
he marketing world is
spinning, and it’s picking up
speed. There has never been
a more exciting time to help
marketing teams make sense of their
options and execute strategies. That
process begins with salespeople who
understand how to stop the spinning —
how to help marketers figure out what
they’re trying to accomplish.
Today’s marketers are reeling. They
need to create programs that engage
new customers and retain current ones.
They want to boost brand awareness but
control budgets. They aim to get multiple
offices and departments on the same
page. And it would be nice if they could
get home at a reasonable hour.
Tablets, mobile messaging, social media,
e-marketing, banner ads, customized
print collateral — how can marketers
make sense of it all? They’re searching
for partners like WebbMason to fill in
the gaps. What they have is a keen sense
of what their customers or members
need. What they crave is a singlesource marketing services partner that
can best connect their messages to the
marketplace.
Their messages. Not our products and
services.
In 1989, when WebbMason began with
500-square-feet of office space, our
founders Kip Webb and Warner Mason
realized something important: The
company would never grow unless its
customers did. They wanted this firm to
be a haven for salespeople who value the
role of creating real partnerships with
customers.
The same holds true in 2014 as we
celebrate our 25th year. We stop the
hectic spinning through listening and
discovery, realizing that we can’t solve
an organization’s problem unless we
understand it.
We believe the role of a salesperson is to
become an expert in the client’s business,
not necessarily in our own business.
The way to build trust is to take some
risks, to ask provocative questions, to
get to the heart of the answers and to let
conversations go deep into the customer’s
world. We spend most of our time on the
“front end” of opportunities, figuring out
what we know about the customer and
learning what don’t we know. Only then
can we start to suggest tools and programs.
That’s how we establish trust, and that
kind of salesperson is the lifeblood of
WebbMason. We try to coach them, but
never curtail them. It’s a mentality that
has helped us become a $100 million firm.
We now go to market as an integrated
marketing services provider that delivers
strategic impact. Our salespeople are
devising website strategies to maximize
the power of online technology, providing
analytics to help clients track and
refine marketing campaigns, delivering
personalized URL campaigns that
persuade recipients to take action and
much more. Meanwhile, WebbMason
is arming them with tools they need to
pinpoint, win and penetrate accounts.
One tool is cross-channel marketing
automation
technology that enables clients
to create, source, deploy and measure
their integrated marketing programs.
Another is workflow and collaboration
software that helps marketing teams clear
their desks of tasks and clear their minds
of common problems.
Empowered with these kinds of tools,
the hits keep on coming: a new winback program and prospect marketing
campaign for a health care firm, a new
interactive marketing strategy that
includes video and social media for a
retailer, a new cross-media program for a
bank and more.
Isn’t it fantastic when you find people
who hunger for knowledge about
their prospects, their competitors and
themselves? When they’re motivated to
solve problems, not just sell products?
When they view clients as partners
instead of sources of commission?
It’s more than fantastic. It’s our future.
Doug Traxler is chief development officer
and executive vice president of sales and
marketing at WebbMason, based in Hunt
Valley, Md., and a PSDA board member.
Visit www.webbmason.com.
PSDA.ORG | JANUARY 2014 | PRINT SOLUTIONS | 29
CONTINUED HEAD
Customers Are
Different Now
BY MARK TRUMPER
I
have 11 full-time IT people here at
MaverickLabel.Com. If someone
would have told me that in the
1980s or ’90s, when I ran the
distributor FMC Resource Management,
there’s no way I would have believed it.
But here we are. Those IT people are now
the biggest segment of the company. And
instead of being a label firm that uses
technology, we are actually a technology
firm that happens to sell labels. There’s a
huge difference between those two. I’m
proud of how much we’ve evolved.
Frankly, I’m not in the same business
I started in, or even in the same one
that existed a few years ago. When
we launched MaverickLabel.Com, I
called ourselves a “dismane” — part
distributorship, part manufacturer, part
e-commerce provider.
We still print stuff, but now we’re doing
things like releasing updates to our website
weekly — new offerings, new functionality,
new search engine optimization strategies
to keep up with Google’s changing
algorithms. Each day feels like a Brave New
World, and for that reason, it’s an exciting
time to be in business.
In 2014, the “state of the industry” is
not that more print business is moving
online. It’s that business-to-consumer
behavior is moving to the business-tobusiness world.
Think about that trend for a moment.
Concepts like free freight, couponing,
discounting, seeing a sample of a
customized label on screen before
ordering — the whole mindset of the
30 | PRINT SOLUTIONS | JANUARY 2014 | PSDA.ORG
average consumer is different. Five years
ago, a distributor might have responded
with, “Hang on, we don’t do free anything
unless you’re a customer” (or unless profit
from the order would be unusually high).
But today, for just a $300 order, what
are you willing to do? More to the point,
what are you expected to do because
customers demand more?
That’s an interesting question for us at
MaverickLabel.Com, because we have
160,000 customers, and we haven’t met
any of them. We don’t really need to
know where (even from which country)
the next order is coming from. But
we absolutely need to know about our
customers’ needs. That’s why we spend
a great deal of time surveying customers,
and why our eight customer service folks
spend all day, every day, asking them
questions on the phone.
Our technology innovation hasn’t
changed the fact that we have a strong
desire to connect with the people
buying from us. What has changed —
profoundly — is that those people are
more intelligent, hurried and insistent
on having excellent systems at their
fingertips. Here, we need to be an expert
in understanding how to deliver digital
labels to small and medium-sized
customers in the easiest, fastest way
possible. I began in my career (at UARCO
in 1977) talking about eight-week delivery
times. Today, we talk in terms of hours.
Our customers won’t give us the time
of the day — or future business — if
we don’t prove ourselves with each
order. Every. Single. Time. We play in an
industry where the lifeblood is repeat
orders, but loyalty has gone out the door.
It’s a world of what-have-you-done-forme-lately? Why should a customer do
business with us instead of the 400 other
people he could call right now?
Every. Single. Time.
Remember back in business school, when
professors used to say that businesses
could pick only two of these three —
quality, price and customer service? Well,
if you don’t have all three today, you’re
just not taken seriously in the market.
Having a good price is a given. If you do
any kind of e-commerce, your system has
to be perfect. And customer service is still
a key that often requires a blend of people
or technology.
When I arrive at my office at
MaverickLabel.Com, I can’t help but
reminding myself that we’re just one
Facebook post or tweet away from an
absolute disaster. The business world
is a global superhighway, and when
your company sells exclusively online,
then customer expectations are that
much higher. In fact, we just had one
customer call us, and we informed him
we would be closed on Christmas Day.
He was simply appalled — what did we
mean we were closed? Weren’t we an
online company? That’s an interesting
perspective, isn’t it? It’s certainly telling.
I’m glad MaverickLabel.Com is nichefocused, and I recommend a specialist
approach. When you truly understand
your customers, you can use that
knowledge and apply it to prospects. In
CONTINUED HEAD
In other words, it’s easier to solve problems
for prospects — and gain valuable business
— if you’ve solved similar problems before.
Focusing on a niche, then, drastically
reduces the selling cycle. You’re able to
ask prospects three of four questions that
immediately get their attention.
But no matter your focus, make no
mistake, customers are in complete
control. Change a shipment option
online? That better be easy. See a previous
order along with a thumbnail graphic?
That better not take long. Change the
language and currency automatically? We
can do that now. Customers want to see
it, touch it and know it, and it’s our job to
make sure they don’t have to think much.
So today, I think the state of the industry
isn’t really about knowing who your
customers are — Mary Beth or Bob
or Jane. It’s about anticipating and
understanding what they need, what they
won’t tolerate and how they will make
their next buying decision.
Mark Trumper is CEO of
MaverickLabel.Com in Edmonds, Wash.
Visit www.mavericklabel.com.
PSDA.ORG | JANUARY 2014 | PRINT SOLUTIONS | 31
CONTINUED HEAD
Big Data Is
the Future
BY VANJA DJURIC
D
ata-driven marketing refers to
the overall marketing insights
and decisions that can be
interpreted from the analysis
of collected data about consumers. Data
from customer interactions from an
assortment of sources allow organizations
to collect more information about
their consumers. With this capital of
data, it is no secret that organizations
should know their consumers and
should be able to make better marketing
decisions. With resources from social
interactions, Google Analytics and
online survey design tools such as
Qualtrics, the cost of collecting data has
significantly decreased.
The past couple of years have been
exciting for the data-driven marketing
industry. Research on the future of the
“big data” has continued to expand; yet,
it still remains a developing topic with
many areas of uncertainty. Over the past
few years, I have seen big data defined
in many different ways, thus creating
a misperception as to what the best
practices are for strategies that connect
data, analytics and marketing intelligence,
providing actionable results.
As a university with a distinguished
direct/interactive marketing educational
program, The Taylor Institute for
Direct Marketing at the Department
of Marketing of The University of
Akron is continuously looking at ways
to participate within the data-driven
marketing industry by attending
conferences and networking to stay
well-informed of what’s new in the everevolving data-driven direct marketing
32 | PRINT SOLUTIONS | JANUARY 2014 | PSDA.ORG
field. But also, we continue to improve
our data-driven marketing curriculum for
the undergraduate marketing majors as
well as the MBA graduate concentration
in direct/interactive marketing.
Don’t Get Caught Up in the
Hype of Big Data
As our world becomes more competitive
and global — customers have more
control; barriers to entry are minimal —
defining our destiny by using an
opinion/gut feeling is long gone. It is not
a matter of should we or could we, but we
must use the power of data and analytics.
Big data can be intimidating when it
comes to managing it or creating a
strategy around it. The key is to look at
big data as an opportunity. Speaking at
the Direct Marketing Association’s
National Center for Data-Driven
Marketing (NCDM13) event late last year,
one data-driven marketing guru, George
Corugedo of RedPoint Global, said, “Do
not get caught up in the hype of big data,
but focus on the fundamentals of
analytics.” I interpret this as the
traditional way of looking at analytics is
the key, and the most important point
here is how you frame the question.
Capturing everything when you can and
questioning everything allows you to
experiment a lot, fail fast and move
further on.
Shift the Conversation from
Big Data to the Right Data
With so much hype around big data,
we get caught up in capturing as much
information as we can, but don’t spend
nearly as much time analyzing and
creating a unique experience customized
to our customers’ needs as we should. At
the end of the rollercoaster, as Jeff Berry
of LoyaltyOne, said, “It is not the size
of your dataset; it’s what you do with it
that counts.” The right data is essential
to communication and engagement with
consumers. Having big data on hand,
we have a lot more opportunities to
make those conversations and customer
engagement more personal.
So now the question is, how does a
leading university best prepare the future
data-driven industry rock stars?
1. Data isn’t a silo — embrace big data!
In order to stay in the game, we need
to think in a more comprehensive way
than a simple transactional dataset.
Big data is not going anywhere; it is
simply getting bigger. The sooner an
organization catches up, the better off
within the competitive environment
it is.
2. Develop students in the right “big data
mindset.” Developing students who are
able to find those right data points that
correlate directly to driving results of the
organization is the key.
3. Provide many experiments
to students. Allow students to
experiment with numerous datasets,
with a significant component aiming
at forming the right questions. Think
big, start small, scale fast.
4. Allow for failure. Permit students
to fail within their experiments,
providing that they come back with
significant takeaways. Sometimes,
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it is not necessarily a question of
determining a specific or right answer,
but more so about learning the
methodology.
Every organization needs to have
the conversation about data-driven
marketing and big data right now. With
well-rounded training featuring plenty of
hands-on projects, and our continuous
efforts to enhance curriculum to focus
on data-driven marketing, students from
our marketing majors that graduate from
The University of Akron, go into the
companies well-equipped to put datadriven marketing to work in order to
engage customers more effectively, drive
value and increase ROI.
Vanja Djuricc is director of analytics
at the Taylor Institute at the University
of Akron in Akron, Ohio. Visit
blog.thetaylorinstitute.org.
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