In addition to having a website and a blog, a business still needs to use print materials to market itself effectively. Some customers still want something tangible in their hands. This means printed material that supports a business’ marketing and sales effort. For example, one should bring a brochure, business card and catalog on a sales call. For exhibiting at a trade show, one should have a sales sheet to distribute and for a speaking event, fliers should be handed out.

Print materials are important because they are affordable, more so than most other forms of advertising. They help explain a company – its products and services. The most essential print marketing pieces are business cards, brochures, catalogs, one-page sales sheets, fliers, stationery and direct-mail pieces.

Small quantities of price lists, fliers and sales sheets can be produced in high-enough quality on a company’s own printer especially if they have a color one. This allows the company to tailor information to their own specifics and reduce waste by only producing what they need. For larger quantities of material, an outside print company should be used. Local copy shops and copy centers of office superstores can be used because they are fast and relatively inexpensive. Internet-based print services is also an option and are typically less expensive than copy shops. A company must not forget that ultimately visibility is the key.

Some industry observers are predicting an “inkjet future” for digital printing thanks to improvements in all types of drop-on-demand (DOD) inkjet technologies that has accelerated inkjet’s adoption in an increasing number of applications, Piezoelectric drop-on-demand is positioned to dominate industrial applications within the world of print production. Piezo DOD is a proven industrial technology used in wide-format printing and industrial marking and coding since the late 1980s. Over many years, FUJIFILM Dimatrix, Inc. has improved the technology’s speed, accuracy, consistency and reliability.

Piezo DOD inkjet technology allows every jet on a FUJIFILM Dimatrix printhead to operate concurrently and at a high throughput rate without trading off drop placement accuracy and this enables precision jetting at production speed. The durable materials FUJIFILM Dimatrix uses in their manufacture allows the company’s patented printhead products to jet the broadest range of inks and other fluids at sustained high frequencies.

In the printing industry, FUJIFILM Dimatrix works with a renowned list of OEMs and systems integrators to bring its technology to market. As drop-on-demand inkjet technology grows in application and sophistication, the number of companies that need more than just Piezo DOD inkjet technology and components has increased.

Hardware sales are strong for all three bands of large-format digital inkjet systems, largely at the expense of conventional process and practice. The United Kingdom market sustains approximately 5,500 wide-format systems with two-thirds being lower band – a 62% market share in solvent printers up to 2.5 million and they anticipate selling another 780-plus systems in 2008.

Research shows that 93% of commercial printers outsource wide-format. Epson hardware is engineered so that only its own inks are compatible. B&P Lightbrigade sells in excess of 300 large-format systems per year, ranking as Agfa’s top pan-European re-seller. It represents a number of leading brands as well as marketing its own Uniform range. The cost of hardware and ink is dropping. The difference is, that ink continues to sell throughout the life of the machine. The ongoing supply fuel is what makes it profitable.

The future for the large-format sector suggests onward development across all aspects.

Fairfax Media journalists won the top awards at the Qantas Media Awards in Auckland. Phil Kitchin of the Dominion Post won the Senior Reporter of the Year Award and The Quantas Fellow to Wolfson College, Cambridge, where he will study investigative journalism for ten weeks. Along with Dominion Post editor Tim Pankhurst, Kitchin was awarded the Print Industry Award for Outstanding Achievement in acknowledgement of the skill, determination and courage in the newspaper’s investigation and publication of the Louise Nicholas case involving allegations of police pack rape.

Kitchin won the Senior Reporter of the Year for a portfolio of four stories while Ian Steward of The Press, another Fairfax publication, was named Junior Reporter of the Year. Qantas Awards were also given to the first crop of Fairfax Media journalism interns. The Manawatu Standard was named Newspaper of the Year in the up to 25,000 circulation category, which it last won in 2005. The Sunday Star-Times was a finalist in the Weekly Newspaper of the Year Award.

Approximately 75 industry professionals attended the Graphic Arts Premier Partners webinar, “The Moment has Arrived: Custom, Cross-Channel Communications Comes of Age,” which was an exclusive for members of Xerox Premier Partners, a global network of leading print providers dedicated to developing new business opportunities with digital technologies. John Mahoney, president of The Mahoney Company, delivered the opening address and focused on the successful, multi-channel go-to-market campaign his company runs for Intel, a non-digital-printing division of Hewlett Packard and IDA Software. In approximately six months, the program generated a 9.26% response rate, 174 leads and a sales pipeline of nearly $30 million on a campaign investment of less than $100,000.

Mahoney presented convincing evidence that the moment for custom, cross-channel communications has arrived. He cited his own company’s recent success re-branding as a marketing services company after a 60% decline in business from 2001 to 2005. The Xerox Graphic Arts Premier Partners program was founded in 2000 and has more than 700 members in 48 countries on six continents.