Scott McCorkle, CEO Salesforce Marketing Cloud at salesforce.com writes in AdWeek: “...some of our largest customers have requested a way to integrate their print and digital channels using our platform. They wanted to send customers triggered, unique print messages as part of an overall customer journey. The average journey merges both physical and digital components, so to entirely ignore the print side is a marketing mistake. We've added on-demand print to the Marketing Cloud so customers can receive physically printed materials alongside email, social and in-app content.” Marketing automation changed the practice of marketing and is changing the desired attributes of all new marketing hires. But how many print business owners know what marketing automation is and how it drives the decisions of their customers? How many printers use marketing automation themselves?

His article was “5 Times the Next Big Thing Failed to Kill the Last Big Thing” and they were

1. Amazon hasn't killed the retail store.

2. Digital hasn't killed print.

3. Mobile messaging hasn't killed email.

4. Instagram and Snapchat haven't killed Facebook.

5. Ad blocking won't kill great advertising.

And while the fifth item is in my mind, when I read the opinion column in Advertising Age that explained why ad blockers are really good for advertising, I thought of the defeatist economics book “Small is Beautiful” and the various sayings that losing builds character. The thrust of the AdAge piece is that advertising will get better and more meaningful, and people will appreciate the good stuff, and will somehow not block that. I enjoyed the piece, but I don't buy it, especially since I have installed an ad blocker and found it solved lots of computer problems I was having. 

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Last week I recommended the writings of investor John Mauldin. He has continued his letter to the next president which analyzes world events and economic conditions in part two. It is a free download. 

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The US Census Bureau has published an interesting infographic “A Digital Nation.” The infographic shows many aspects of society's adoption of technology and digital media. Back in 1984, 8.2% of households owned a computer (does my PCjr count?), and it is now 85%. In 1997, the number of households with Internet service was 18% (remember when the burning question was whether MSN would wipe out AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy?) and is now 79%. It's a nice summary of data, presented in easy to grasp graphics. A PDF for 11x17 paper can be downloaded.

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Industry profits data for Q4-2015 were just released, and they will be our chart of the week next week. Small and medium shops held onto their better profitability, and large printers rebounded from their massive writedowns with a less-than average quarter. There were revisions to prior quarters as well.