Interviewer:  This is Pat Henry, WhatTheyThink.  Today we are at Print Delivers, New York City, an event co-hosted by The Print Council and Savvy Fine Papers.  With us this morning are Ben Cooper, Executive Director of The Print Council, and David Mastervich, who is Manager of Catalogs and Publications, U.S. Postal Service. 

Ben, I’ll start by asking about Print Delivers.  Please tell us about the seminar series, how many have been held, how they’re organized, and what they aim to accomplish. 

Ben Cooper:  Print Delivers is a series of seminars that have actually been on the drawing board since the Print Council began.  Our founding goal for the Print Council was to develop tools, information materials that we could take to a group of folks we refer to as media specifiers.  That’s a wide group of people who make decision about what media they’re going to purchase for their communications campaigns. 

We began the Print Delivers sessions last fall.  The New York program is the sixth we have done.  We have done a national agency presentation at Chicago and Detroit and what we refer to as regional presentations in mid—Minneapolis, Washington D.C., Dallas, and now New York.  We have additional presentations on the books for – back in Chicago, and then we’re looking to do one on the west coast. 

Interviewer:  David, one of the things we’re going to be talking about today are catalogs; catalogs and direct mail.  Anyone that says that printing catalogues are obsolete hasn’t looked into my mailbox lately.  Why do you think that marketers continue to rely on traditionally printed catalogues? 

David Mastervich:  The simple answer is that it works.  We’ve seen results that people shop with catalogues and then go online to do their actual buying; that they spend 163% more money when they’re shopping through a hard copy catalogue before they go online.  So they’re very good at generating what ever marketer wants, and that’s the purchase. 

Interviewer:  And, Mr. Cooper, how have your member who are printers benefited by their participating in Print Delivers and other activities of the Print Council. 

Ben Cooper:  We believe and have evidence from follow up surveys and also the comments made by the printing companies, especially, who have been involved in hosting these events, that they have been very successful and that the return to them has been significant.  Now, I would say, however, that one of the objectives of the Print Council is not to necessarily benefit a specific company, or a specific host an event, but to expand the awareness of the industry itself.  But, it’s fair to say too that those companies that have been on the podium when we have done these presentations or in some cases who have hosted them, believe very strongly that they have benefited. 

In addition to that, we have had a significant kind of cross-branding, if you will, showing people how important this entire supply chain is.  Everything from the planning of the tree to, as David’s organization does, deliver the product to the mailbox.  And I think that’s a message that we have missed in our industry for many, many years and it’s something that has really become significant.  So we actually have – our host printers are learning more about the process themselves as this goes along.  Our participants are learning, and of course, the people who are guests in the audience learn a great deal as they go through these sessions.