Print Lives, But My Industry is Killin’ Me. A Response to the Response to President Obama.

Those of you who know me personally know that when it comes to politics, controversy and even food, I am pretty much like Switzerland. I try not to offend, and not be easily offended. I typically remain neutral. Industry communications over the past week, however, have caused me to become a little more outspoken. 

In one instance, one of our trade associations issued a video response to cost cutting efforts by President Obama in his attempt to eliminate wasteful printing.

In another episode of outrageousness, our industry produced, and in my opinion, regrettably shared, a video titled “The Sexy Side of Print.”

I realize our industry has struggled, but there seem to be better ways to promote our efforts than these two examples.

Below is my video response to the first action that brought me out of neutrality.

Here is the video reply to the President’s message that prompted my response:

Here is the link to President Obama’s video. For some reason, I was unable to embed it properly here.

I am still too disturbed by what I saw on the “sexy print” video to have formulated a response to that!

Good Grief! Another On-Line Relationship Exposed!

It started innocently enough, as do most on-line, long distance relationships.  One evening after hours, I was alone in my office surfing the internet, and came across this website that was truly engaging.  It seemed to offer something that I had been missing.

So I explored further, digging deeper into the background. I reacted to what I saw.  Making sure it was a match I felt comfortable with, I shared some information, and inquired further. Then there was reaction on the other end. Some emails quickly followed; some even contained very interesting attachments. All very good stuff. Then along came Twitter and the relationship blossomed.  The messages were delivered timely, and all seemed to be speaking personally to me. As the inquiries intensified, so did the responses to them.  Email, direct mail, text messages, and yes, even that first, somewhat nervous “live” phone chat.

Our much anticipated face-to-face meeting came during a conference, in a restaurant near Chicago’s Midway airport.  As expected it was slightly awkward at first.  But then, because we had developed this relationship on-line, meeting in real life only confirmed the fact that this was bound to happen, sooner or later:

I invite you to join my friend John Foley (@johnfoleyjr) for our next Lunch & Learn series on Thursday, June 23rd from 11:30 – 1:00.  This exciting session will introduce to you the best methods of a multi-channel marketing approach to increase your marketing effectiveness.  Register here.

In the meantime, since John will be visiting us from Boston, he wants to make the most of his Arkansas experience.  He has already expressed a desire to experience a HubCap burger.  What suggestions do you have?