I’m Barb Pellow, Group Director at Info Trends.  What I want to do is spend the next couple of minutes talking to you about some critical trends that we see for 2011 that I think are going to have a major impact on the printing and publishing market.  

I think the first thing we all need to look at is that this is the year when you’re really going to need to transform your business to becoming a cross-media in marketing services provider.  InfoTrends recently completed a study titled; The New World of Cross Media, one of the key findings was that the average campaign used three different media channels.  If you’re going to be successful in today’s market, you want to be able to extract revenue streams from all the channels that your customers are using.   

The second piece is that this is the year that you’re going to need to understand data.  When you look at consumers today, they don’t want to be treated like they’re part of a mass audience.  It is truly a year and a time when people want to be treated as individuals.  You’re going to need to be able to work with your customers, understand how to segment data, how to mine data and how to get that customer to deliver the right message to the right customer via the right channel.   

The other thing that’s very important in today’s market is that personalization alone won’t be enough.  People are used to interacting and engaging.  And so what you’re going to need to be able to do is blend that personalized message with other channels.  I’m going to have to be able to take that direct mail piece, get them to link to maybe a mobile website or to link to a text campaign that gives me the opportunity to win something.  I’m going to need to have to interact and engage with that consumer because that what they’re used to in today’s marketplace.  

 The next piece is that it’s no longer going to be good enough to say that you can’t afford to get into cross media services.  There are too many tools available, via cloud-based computing options to let you get in the game.  I look around at what companies like XMPIE, MindFire, Pageflex have done; they’ve made it affordable for you to get in the game.  

The next and final big piece that we see that’s going to have a huge impact on 2011 is mobile technology.  In 2011, the sales of Smart Phones will surpass personal computers.  What that means is that you’ve got to be able to have tools and services in place to capture the energy associated with those Smart Phones.  It really is going to be a year when cross media, data, mobile and social reign, and it’s the year where you’ve got to figure out how to get in the game or you’re going to threaten the survival of your business.