Ten years ago, no one had heard of this company, but today Vertis Inc., a privately held company with more than 120 locations, and almost 9,000 employees serves some 3,000 major clients. After a period of acquisitions in the 1990s, Vertis took the middle syllables from "advertising" for its name and integrated its three operating units, formerly Big Flower Holdings, to form a company tightly focused on advertising production, direct marketing, digital production, and media planning.

“Printing” doesn’t appear in the title or the advertising of Vertis, yet the nearly $2 billion company has numerous web offset and sheetfed units. “Printing” doesn’t appear because Vertis focuses on services: in advertising, digital production, direct marketing, media, retail and newspaper to serve a diverse client base including ad agencies, the automotive industry, consumer packaged goods, durable goods and manufacturing, financial services, fragrance and beauty products, food and grocery, healthcare, media and publishing, newspapers, retail, and technology.

Don Roland has been President and Chief Executive Officer of Vertis and a Director of Vertis since June 2000, and has been Chairman since April 2, 2001. Prior to June 2000, Don was the President and Chief Executive Officer of TC Advertising. He was with TC Advertising for 17 years and prior to TC, Don spent 17 years with Times Mirror Press.

WTT: Is it true that Vertis is growing in leaps and bounds through acquisitions?

DR: Starting in 1993, Big Flower Holdings began growing by acquisitions in three major companies, The LTC Group, TC Advertising and Webcraft, involving marketing, advertising and media. The businesses operated autonomously, but lacked a central vision, a shared set of values and a unified approach to the market.

At the end of 1999, the firm was taken private and in 2000, Vertis was established to maximize the power and value of all of the acquisitions by integrating them into one cohesive operating company. It was a turning point. We dedicated the company to provide an integrated marketing and advertising solution that seamlessly combines advertising, direct marketing, media, imaging, and progressive technology.

Taking the central two syllables from "advertising" to form the name, Vertis, uniquely centered us in advertising innovation. Our main goal is to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of our customers’ advertising investment. It’s very important to apply technology to reduce time-to-market and to use a variety of mediums to bring buyers to sellers. We want to be the most effective in bringing these seamless solutions to all phases of advertising, from planning to targeting, creating, delivering and even to tracking the results.


WTT: What are the challenges of managing this integration and growth?

DR: There were four challenges we faced in forming Vertis: first, developing and instilling a common vision, values, and culture throughout Vertis and with its 9000 employees; second, producing results that convince customers that our integrated solutions are a benefit to them: third, meeting our commitments to all of our constituents despite the difficult economic times of the last two years; and fourth, operating effectively in both the "integrated solutions world" and the "process world."

As CEO, I feel that defining the vision, culture and a common set of values is a very important part of my job. Equally important is building brand awareness: who we are and our differentiation. The CEO is the keeper of the brand and the keeper of the vision and values.

I was born and raised as a printer; my father was a printer and I grew up in a printing plant. When I talk about who we are and don’t emphasize print, it’s not because I come from outside the industry. I worked in printing for 17 years and ended as VP of operations at Times Mirror Press, the commercial printing division of Times Mirror. The majority of my career has been in commercial print and advertising.


WTT: You have organized your company into a number of divisions based on service. Yet, none have "printing" in their name. Could you explain the philosophy behind this organization?

DR: It’s very important that Vertis focuses on the customer. We apply our diverse capabilities in ways that help each customer improve the return on their marketing and advertising investment. In so doing, we help them succeed. We are customer focused, not process focused. Printing is a process, and we value our processes to the degree that they create products and services to help our customers succeed. At the same time, the majority of our products are produced through different forms of printing—web offset, sheetfed offset, large format graphics, and digital one-to-one printing.

Our customers are interested in our product and services, not so much in how they are produced. I personally feel that concentrating on the process is inward-looking—not a good idea for a company or an industry. We want to be outward-looking and customer centric. We will change our processes as our customers’ needs change. Our customers will remain our constant. The processes are all variable.


WTT: Why should customers recognize you as a source of printing, and how do you build an identity in the graphics world?

DR: Our preference is not to be a printer, but to be a source of efficient and effective advertising solutions. Printing happens to be one of the most effective processes to do that. We design and recommend printing process solutions where they are most effective. Because of their effectiveness, customers continue to give us their business. Our identity in the graphics world is secondary to our identity in our customers’ world. If our customers recognize us, then the graphics world will recognize us. We are not in the business to please the industry but to please our customers.


WTT: In this downturn, what are you doing to maintain your business?

DR: Giving our customers effective and efficient advertising and marketing processes. How do we get products to our customers more effectively? We concentrate on helping our customers deliver their messages. We combine our processes into an integrated approach that allows us to help our customers best reach their customers. We see this as an opportunity. The economic downturn is a problem for everyone and our role is to help our customers generate sales and to define solutions.


WTT: Is it necessary today to keep the latest equipment on the floors of your print shops?

DR: In capital administration, we are very disciplined in our approach to the use of capital and the purchase of equipment. We want to make sure purchases have a proper return for investment. We will use equipment that is most effective in meeting our customer needs and that has a proper return on investment.

Overall, proper capital administration relates to properly understanding marketing needs. Over capacity is a disadvantage in any industry where people make poorly informed decisions about adding equipment.


WTT: What value proposition do you bring to your customers?

DR: We bring an entire digital workflow. We use digital technology that helps our customers reduce time and cost, from the time they make their merchandizing and marketing decisions, to the delivery of the message, fulfillment, and measuring the effectiveness of the message. Digital technology allows us to take many steps out of each process and makes it more efficient. Time-to-market is important in selling a product and, by removing steps and time from the process, we reduce cost and make the advertising message more effective.

Of equal and perhaps greater importance, by using digital processes to target and identify the correct customer and the correct message, we deliver the right message to the right customer. This increases the probability of a sales or purchase decision being generated by the message. The combination of the targeting, removing time, eliminating redundant steps and reducing cost increases the return on our customer’s advertising dollar. We are not talking about cost per piece: We’re talking about return per dollar invested. The better we are able to do this, the more successful we will be.


WTT: How do you keep your sales force motivated in a tough economy?

DR: I think the very best sales people love to help their customers; they are always looking for new products and services and want to offer things their customers will value. By concentrating on integrated solutions, our sales force has tremendous tools to offer. We make a point of showing practical examples to customers to demonstrate the effectiveness of these tools and processes. Because of this, our sales force is highly motivated and remains so during a tough economy.


WTT: What is your vision of the future of Vertis, specifically, and your market niche in general?

DR: We will continue to provide integrated solutions to enable our customers to meet their goals in advertising and marketing. We will always live in a multimedia world, and our solutions will harness all forms of the media. Our solutions will evolve as the economy changes, as customers’ needs change, and as media itself changes. Our customers will be our compass.

Electronic media particularly will continue to develop new vehicles to deliver targeted messages rapidly to customers. All media will be challenged to respond to the requirements of immediacy and efficiency. Print will continue to evolve to respond to that challenge. Our customers will increasingly demand that we help them target and deliver the appropriate message to the appropriate customers quickly and cost-effectively. We are going to continue to focus on delivering results to our customers and finding the appropriate technology to deliver solutions that will reduce our customer’s time-to-market and increase the return on their investment.


WTT: Is there a closing message for graphic arts professionals?

DR: Yes. The power of graphics in marketing and advertising is immense. For example, we do primary market research in a survey entitled "Customer Focus." The surveys are highly statistically valid and show that print remains far and away the most effective media for generating a buying response from customers. We ask the question, "When you are ready to make a purchase, which media do you turn to make a decision?" In 1998, some 62 percent identified print media, newspapers, inserts, magazines, direct mail, and brochures. In 2000 and 2002, 60 percent identified print media. In 1998, we didn’t ask about the Internet because it wasn’t a major factor yet. In 2000, 11 percent identified the Internet in making decisions, and in 2002, 13 percent. The Internet is growing but not at the expense of print advertising.

Graphic arts aren’t static; they are dramatic and constantly changing. Graphic arts encompass all media solutions, not just ink on paper, but all graphic media and even non-graphic media benefit from multimedia. Multimedia solutions are becoming more powerful, and graphic arts play a role in advertising and marketing messages to a greater degree than many realize. That’s an important concept to get across to graphic arts professionals. In most cases, media people should design multi-media solutions that best deliver results for customers instead of trying to convince customers that one media should be used exclusively. Graphic arts in all forms have a bright long-term future.