Hi. I’m Mike Kyle and I’m with Pace. We are formerly known as Pace Lithographers. We’re about a 36-year-old company based out of City of Industry, California, Los Angeles area. We’ve been a commercial printer—40-inch, 28?inch type of operation. About two and a half years ago we added the digital press, the HP Indigo. And in doing that we also saw that we needed to add our mailing operation in-house, along with our in-house bindery that we already had to really supplement and create that foundation for what we felt was the transformation of the industry. As we did that, we then began bringing on the technical side of things with developers. We brought on an email specialist so that we could really target that side, the online and the email side of the cross-media as well.
And then we started doing some things like putting up green screens and video cameras so that we could supply video for the QR Codes that we are offering. We could do video blogs and offer, you know, online content. We like to call them Video Brochures now that we offer. So we’ve really kind of transformed ourselves into—we like to call ourselves more of a marketing support services organization because we don’t want to really replace any of the marketing side of things or marketing organizations out there, but we certainly want to support them. We want to be that executional arm that says we’ll fill every gap. We have the technology, we have the resources, the expertise; let us help achieve those kinds of results that you’re looking for. And that’s really where Pace is today.
One of the recent I guess case studies that we were involved with was one of our accounts, City National Bank. It’s an account that we’ve had for quite some time. The owner is actually the account representative that deals with them and he came to us with the interesting idea of adding QR Codes to their piece. And in doing that what we were asking ourselves to do is really to invent something that we hadn’t done before, but we had a pretty good idea of what we needed to do mainly from attending here at PODI. But we took that opportunity to really take it to the next level. One of the things that we looked at was the idea of bringing it to a URL, bringing it to a mobile-enabled website, or bringing it to some kind of video presentation.
Knowing that City National Bank had a really good amount of content, especially video content, we felt that that would be a really strong addition to a brochure piece that they had. So a QR Code was placed on a brochure that they had that we really kind of tagged into the name of Video Brochure. Because what it allowed them to do was to talk about a testimonial of a customer, add that QR Code that immediately went to the video content of that same testimonial, really adding the depth to the whole piece. Now at this point, City National Bank puts QR Codes on most every brochure that they do in some form, typically going with video and those kinds of things.
We almost always stay away from directing a QR Code to a URL or to a website; only if it’s mobile-enabled will we really attempt to do that. But it really allowed us to test what devices could use this. What kind of process in our final-cut pro did we need to use to be able to get it displayed on the Blackberry, the Android, and the iPhone; all of the different testing to really get the resolution that was required to meet their strict standards that they show on television, but also to make sure the functionality was there so that every device that would scan that would make sure that they would get that content. I think that testing and that real, you know, diligence in looking into how to prepare the file, how to make sure that it was working, is really what made that a success for us.
Official camera partner of WhatTheyThink and the drupa daily. 
Discussion
By Chuck Gehman on Sep 01, 2011
Many thanks to Mike and WTT for telling this story. When I read the word "drastic" in the story title, I was concerned that this was another story of a company failing and trying to pull out of a dive by becoming a "marketing service provider".
But to the contrary, the picture Mike paints is one of forward-looking, well thought-out additions of services, people and technology to enhance a successful operation with very good existing customer relationships.
And from the technical side of things, the way Mike describes what they've done with their "video brochure" idea demonstrates how they've taken what printers have always been good at-- managing the small, very technical details of production-- and applied that competency to new media.
Finally, I like the way he positions the company-- he is not ambiguous about it, as many are-- a "marketing support services organization because we don’t want to really replace any of the marketing side of things or marketing organizations out there, but we certainly want to support them."
Outstanding!
By Steven Schnoll on Sep 01, 2011
Great story. This is an outstanding example of strong corpoarte leadership
By John Foley on Sep 01, 2011
A great example of a company that started with a plan and then begin to build the infrastructure to support it. Mike Kyle has done a great job of moving Pace in diversifying their business offerings.
My two cents!
John
@johnfoleyjr
By Jason Pinto on Sep 01, 2011
This is definitely an inspiring video! I loved the points Mike made about the success they had with City National Bank.
I think one of the key points in there was that they knew "City National Bank had a really good amount of content, especially video content". Because they put in the research or asked the right questions to discover that, it absolutely helped them to offer a more valuable solution that integrated the printed piece.
By Joseph Manos on Sep 01, 2011
Great job Mike and team!
YOU have provided another great example of Print Service Providers that expand beyond traditional print only business models to an area of marketing services.
Why does this work? Because you have done a great job of creating services that bring added value and more importantly, improved marketing results for your customers!
Regardless of what you call the services you have done a fantastic job of leveraging new emerging technologies to provide the results your customers seek. That's always a winning formula for any company.
I would say though...if you are involved in email, mobile marketing and video through customer driven web sites you are much closer to a marketing services provider than a marketing support provider. Just my $.02 cents.