Neanderthal Man is extinct- will someone please tell him!

PR and marketing specialist Alison Stieven-Taylor has some advice for those printers who still haven’t realised that it’s the 21^st century.

Please note. This Artcile was published in ProPrint, February 2006.

PR and marketing specialist Alison Stieven-Taylor has some advice for those printers who still haven’t realised that it’s the 21^st century.

At PacPrint last year there were several exhibitors who had massage therapists available on their stands for visitors to enjoy.

The notion of having massage tables at a pint show would have, some years back, attracted a more smug “wink, wink, say no more” response, but in 2005 it was a welcome novelty that perhaps made the industry appear a little more sensitive.

In what is a heavily male-dominated environment, sensitivity is something the industry could do with, particularly in its interaction with women. Women work successfully in print in roles that span the shop floor through to marketing and senior management (although there are still few at this end of the spectrum). They may be used to a prevailing male workplace and impervious to a printer’s jocularity, but what of those who have to work “with” the industry from the outside?

Unfortunately, the printing industry finds it hard to shake the Neanderthal hangover of the past, despite the best efforts of many. It is the few who pull down the industry with comments like “you shouldn’t come onto the shop floor to press check as you are a distraction to the printers”, as one female brand manager was told recently! Or the brand manager who discovered she had a fan club standing below as she alighted the stairwell in the factory “to see them all looking up my skirt”. Or the lesser offences of being called “girly” or “love” because it’s easier than remembering a name. Or talking to a customer’s cleavage, which of course has been mistaken for her eyes!

Surely we’re past the days when printers thought women in the workplace were only “good for making coffee”, as one printer told me, or as a “secret sales weapon, because everyone likes to look at something pretty”.

This article isn’t about wrist slapping. It’s about understanding who your customers are (many of whom are women) and knowing how to treat them; it’s about becoming a marketer, not just a printer. And it’s about considering your customers’ needs before your own, something the female of the species is naturally very good at- hence the proliferation of women in fields like marketing, PR and customer relations.

Know your customer down to their shoe size, not their bra size!

The Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) environment is a perfect example of a market that really understand its customers. Highly competitive, transient and crowded, the FMCG brand manager’s challenge is to find the most effective way to communicate (read “drive sales”) with the consumer.

The investment made by FMCG companies in developing a deep understanding of what motivated customers to purchase, has turned marketing from a creative environment to more of a science experiment.

Insights into customer behaviour are peppered with graphs and mathematical equations combined with outcomes from focus groups and sampling, to determine what will be on the supermarket shelves-right down to size, shape, colour, flavour and fragrance.

Competing in an over burdened marketplace such as FMCG means your product not only has to stand out and communicate to the customer, it must hit the exact buttons that will make the individual reach out and put your product in their trolley or basket (marketers even know the demographic breakdown of customers using baskets and trolleys-single people and urban dwellers are your predominant basket users).

Printers also need to know their customers intimately, especially those who work in the marketing sector because these clients expect everyone to be as “in touch”, and a printer dragging a club just doesn’t cut it.

The brand manager is a client that lives in the “now”. Their own customers can be fickle in choice depending on the product, and therefore the marketer is always looking for ways to “talk” in a language and style their customer understands and responds to. This often means moving out of their own comfort zones to learn the “speak” of their particular target group, to discover what’s important to their market.

The successful brand manager will surround themselves with a solid creative team of external consultants comprising graphic designers and print buyers, as is the case with Natasja Marcelis, brand manager Tetley.

Responsible for a major customer brand, she rarely comes into contact with her printer, with negotiations conducted through her design team. However, this doesn’t mean she is clueless about the printing process.

“I rely on what the designer brings to the table in terms of printing options available to me. I don’t get too heavily involved, but I will always press check personally, especially on label runs.”

The brand marketing team, or posse, is your customer, not just the brand manager. In fact, the designer and the print buyer can become extensions of your own sales team and do the hard work for you once you know what buttons to push to motivate them.

Alison Stieven-Taylor is the director of PR/media communications company Reality & Illsuion Productions. See www.realityillusion.com

Author: Alison Stieven-Taylor Publication: ProPrint February 2006