Wow. First the I-Pad, now this. Good news for our industry. Both can be game changers.

Economy grows at 5.7 pct pace, fastest since 2003 – Yahoo! Finance.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The economy’s faster-than-expected growth at the end of last year, powered by companies replenishing stockpiles, is likely to weaken as consumers keep a lid on spending.

The 5.7 percent annual growth rate in the fourth quarter was the fastest pace since 2003. It marked two straight quarters of growth after four quarters of decline. Growth exceeded expectations mainly because business spending on equipment and software jumped much more than forecast.

Still, economists expect growth to slow this year as companies finish restocking inventories and as government stimulus efforts fade. Many estimate the nation’s gross domestic product will grow 2.5 percent to 3 percent in the current quarter and about 2.5 percent or less for the full year.

That won’t be fast enough to significantly reduce the unemployment rate, now 10 percent. Most analysts expect the rate to keep rising for several months and remain close to 10 percent through the end of the year.

High unemployment and stagnant wage growth will likely keep consumers cautious about spending. Wages and benefits paid to U.S. workers posted a scant gain in the fourth quarter. And for all of last year, workers’ compensation rose by the smallest amount on records going back more than a quarter-century.

The economic recovery could falter if consumers, who account for 70 percent of economic activity, lack the income to ramp up spending.

“That’s why there’s so much hand-wringing right now,” said Brian Bethune, chief U.S. financial economist for IHS Global Insight. “Can the economy really sustain this? That’s the big question mark sitting out there.”

With hiring still weak, President Barack Obama has stepped up his focus on job creation. On Friday, he will outline the specifics of a proposal to provide tax cuts to small businesses that hire new workers. He touted the plan in his State of the Union address earlier this week.

The goal is “to encourage businesses to respond to rising demand and output by taking the plunge and hiring new workers again,” said Christina Romer, Obama’s top economic advisor.

About 60 percent of the fourth quarter’s growth resulted from a sharp slowdown in the reduction of inventories as firms began to rebuild stockpiles depleted by the recession.

Changes to inventories added 3.4 percentage points to the fourth-quarter growth, the Commerce Department said in its report Friday. Excluding inventories, the economy would have grown at a 2.2 percent clip, the government said. That’s an improvement from 1.5 percent in the third quarter.

Consumer spending rose 2 percent, down from a 2.8 percent rise in the third quarter. It added 1.4 percentage points to GDP growth.

A steep increase in exports also helped boost growth last quarter. The shipment of goods overseas rose 18.1 percent, far outpacing a 10.5 percent rise in imports. Net exports added 0.5 percentage point to GDP.

Government spending was actually a slight drag on growth in the fourth quarter: A small increase in federal spending was outweighed by a drop in state and local spending.

A drop in defense spending accounted for the decline. Federal government spending is likely to pick up and add to growth in the first quarter, Bethune said.

Business spending will likely boost economic growth for several quarters, Bethune said, though not likely enough to make up for sluggish consumer spending. Many companies are upgrading computers, cell phones and machinery as their equipment needs to be replaced just to maintain current levels of production.

In addition, many businesses have healthy balance sheets and don’t need to pay off the large debts that households are struggling with, Bethune added.

For now, the growing economy is benefiting companies up and down the supply chain. Ford Motor Co. this week reported higher fourth-quarter sales and its first annual profit in four years, as it recovers from the devastating downturn the auto industry.

Ford’s “recent success has benefited us,” said Tom Schumann, general manager of EC Kitzel & Sons Inc., a small cutting tool fabricator based in Cleveland, Ohio.

The company, which has 30 employees, bought a new machine tool in December and hired a new worker to run it, the company’s first hire since last spring. Still, many of the company’s suppliers are struggling.

“I’m not totally convinced we’re out of the woods yet,” Schumann said, referring to the economy.

Friday’s report is the first of the government’s three estimates of gross domestic product and is likely to be revised. The government initially estimated third quarter growth was 3.5 percent, which was later revised down to 2.2 percent. The next estimate will be released Feb. 26.

The report provided an upbeat end to an otherwise dismal year: The nation’s economy declined 2.4 percent in 2009, the largest drop since 1946. That’s the first annual decline since 1991.

(Luckily, I have been slammed with new client presentations which require an incredible amount of pre-planning and research. So I have not had the time to write anything personally – although I have received some great questions about paper, ink, the Lacey Act, and how “green” is electronic marketing vs. print. I will be touching on all these when time permits, but in the mean time I will keep re-posting articles that I have found to be relevant to me or my clients.)

Ten Ways to Mix Direct Mail and Social Networking

If you’re like many mid- to large-sized businesses today, you’re probably experimenting with online customer communities. But smart marketers realize that no single channel should be relied on to reach consumers. So we’ve decided to offer a few tips for those of you looking for fresh ways to mix your mail, digital and other media to promote an engaging marketing message.

Remember: In these new forums, community is content. By leveraging contributions from your customers and promoting interactive features on your Web site, you can revitalize direct mail content. Consider, then, these 10 ideas:

1. Make a direct-mail piece a membership card to your exclusive community – Mail recipients a unique code they can use to gain access to a members-only area with exclusive offers and information.
2. Surprise them with pertinent mail offerings — Despite what some think, Web-savvy customers do enjoy relevant mail offerings. Drive members from the computer to the mailbox by letting them provide their mailing addresses in exchange for special offers – coupons, product samples, etc. — made exclusively through the mail.
3. Get members to nominate their friends – Every page on your website should have an option for visitors to share it with a friend. Expand that with the option to key in a mailing address. Members of your community can nominate friends to receive a membership card by mail or kick off a members-only coupon.
4. Create a contest – Invite members to write a slogan, upload a photo or share a relevant video. Use direct mail to invite prospects to go online, submit their entries and see what others have contributed. Arouse their curiosity and let members provide the content.
5. Turn contest entries into direct mail – Have members of your online community vote on content, such as photos submitted by other members. Publish winning entries as a calendar and send it out via direct mail.
6. Create a greeting card promotion – People love to send greeting cards to their friends, so make it part of your ongoing campaign. Give members a palette of creative greetings with images and slogans that relate to your business. Enable them to personalize the greetings and specify a mailing address. You do the mailing.
7. Stage special online-only events – Drive direct-mail recipients to an interactive webcast or chat session with your CEO or a product-line visionary. Only visitors with the special tracking code on the mailer can participate. That makes the event special and gives you a way to track response.
8. Rock the vote – Customers like to learn what other customers are thinking. Launch a survey or poll and promote it to your mailing list. Recipients can vote online and register to see results. You can even distribute results as a mailer.
9. Tease them – Post a “Top Ten Tips” list and promote some of the items via direct mail. Drive recipients online to see the tips they missed. You can do the same with winning entries to a contest or even with advice submitted by your members.
10. Take to the airwaves – Start a series of audio or video podcast interviews with thought leaders in your field. Burn the first five recorded programs on CDs and mail them as promotions. Invite recipients to visit your website and register to subscribe to future programs

By looking to your growing online community as a source of material, you can unlock treasure troves of new content to feed your direct-mail campaigns.

(originally published by Deliver Magazine and Written by Paul Gillin who is an author, speaker and writer who advises businesses on online marketing. He is the author of The New Influencers: A Marketer’s Guide to Social Media and the newly-published Secrets of Social Media Marketing.)

By Harvey Hirsch for “The Digital Nirvana” on January 18th, 2010

From: WhatTheyThink Going Green » Sustainable Forestry Initiative Releases New Standard.

By Gail Nickel-Kailing on January 12th, 2010

Sustainable Forestry Initiative Releases New Standard

Sustainable Forestry Initiative® released a new forest certification standard supporting sustainable forest management. The result of an 18-month public review, the new SFI 2010-2014 Standard includes revisions that:

• Improve conservation of biodiversity
• Address emerging issues such as climate change and bioenergy
• Strengthen fiber sourcing requirements to broaden the practice of sustainable forestry and avoid controversial or illegal offshore fiber sources
• Embrace the Lacey Act amendments to prevent illegal logging
• Expand requirements for logger training
• Expand requirement for support for trained loggers and certified logger programs

The Standard is based on 14 core principles (5 more than the previous standard) that promote sustainable forest management, including measures to protect water quality, biodiversity, wildlife habitat, species at risk, and forests with exceptional conservation value. The Standard also has 20 objectives, 39 performance measures, and 114 indicators.

Some of the revisions include:

(As mentioned, from time to time I will post case studies – this one is NOT from my company, so I have left both the name of the client and printer in)

Climb Every Mountain | Deliver Magazine.

October 7, 2009

(Greenville AAF presents the 2010 Addy Awards – Print meets Social Media Spoof on Mac commercials featuring Beau Phillips and Rebecca Ragland)

Last week, a client asked me to help them get a better grasp on their marketing spend and their internal clients lofty expectations regarding direct mail vs. email ROI.  With their input, I crafted the attached, simple, spreadsheet to help them understand, and hopefully explain the ROI on any given campaign they launch.

If you’d like to use it to plan your own campaigns – just click here to download it.

This is how the sheet works:

• Put in the size of your mailing list (number of contacts).
• Put in your budget (how much you want to spend).
• Put in the price of the product being sold, and the cost per unit.  This gives you the net revenue per order.
• (print) Put in your postage cost per mail piece
• (print) Put in your mail services fee (list prep etc)
• (print) Put in your printing cost per piece.
• (email) Put in any flat fees associated with each deployment.
• (email) Put in the cost per recipient.
• (email) Put in any additional programming or hosting fees
• Put in your list fee.
• Put in creative fees.  This is whatever cost you need to pay your agency or other professional to put the campaign together.

Questions? Drop me a note

Distribution Based Opportunities:

(part 5 in a series)

Perhaps on of the most overlooked of any “Brands” life-cycle is the distribution of the messaging material to consumers – be it in a traditional manner, or in a more technological advanced medium. My thought is that by forming a strategic relationship with a vendor with robust distribution channels already in place will not only reduce costs, but also have an additional benefit to the environment.

• Leveraging technology to deliver personalized messaging

Partnering with a vendor that has a robust technological commitment will result in delivering personalized content across multiple distribution channels. Technologies such as Variable data printing and Cross-Media messaging (PURL’s) continue to lift response rates and provide a greater ROI across several metrics.

• Optimizing regional/national/global distribution centers

With the continued globalization of the marketplace, distribution of marketing products continues to be a key area of “brand” spend. With the reduction of workforce, often time the logistics aspect is delegated to internal logistics specialists. By partnering with a best in class vendor, with a broad regional/national/global footprint you can optimize and ensure that marketing material can be produced near its final destination, creating unique opportunities for cost savings.

• Utilizing a Hy-Pod or POD material management model

Throughout a brands lifecycle, product demand can be tracked, and managed. Product launches often time require shorter runs to establish a presence without committing to a large inventory. As the brand life-cycle continues to grow, the material demands will also increase, allowing for the ability to optimize spend by ordering more, and as the brand matures, the ability to revert back to a POD model. As the chart below illustrates, by partnering with a vendor that has the ability to meet these demands without outsourcing, at multiple distribution points regionally/nationally/globally ensuring quality creates unique opportunities for cost savings.

• Environmental impact

As companies and brands continue to promote a triple bottom line (People/Planet/Profit) they need to understand the impact that distribution plays. Partnering with a vendor that has a robust regional/national/global presence ensures that products are produced near their final destination, increasing not only speed to market, but reducing the environmental impact of shipping. In addition, by having multiple distribution/production hubs, substantial cost saving may be found on shipping charges.

Questions? Drop me a note!

(part 4 in a series)

Vendor-based cost reduction opportunities

Both large and small consumer-facing companies never “go it alone” where the creation/production of the “brand” and its marketing materials is concerned, but the drive for cost-reduction in the current economic climate encourages rethinking of traditional choices for vendor relationships. My thought is that a more strategic use of vendors not only reduces costs, but it can significantly improve the quality and consistency of marketing materials and ensures that they are deployed with agility and timeliness on a regional, national or global level worldwide (more in this in the next post). And this idea is based on proof that in the production of marketing materials, the consolidation/optimization of vendors works where it matters most: driving cost savings.

• Optimizing broad segments of the process

Not simply “outsourcing” but the purposeful aggregation of tasks within a vendor that can streamline the process without sacrificing quality; in fact, quality is improved along with cost reduction when the vendor is both broad based in capabilities and expert in those tasks (see earlier post about printers re-inventing themselves).

• Processes executed regionally/nationally/globally

The production of marketing collateral involves multiple small steps that must be executed in order; optimized use of vendors allows these processes to go on almost non-stop thanks to time-zone advantages. And the more geographically diverse a single vendor is, the more these processes are kept “in-house” within that vendor. This also minimizes the number of “handoffs” of materials among different entities, eliminating chances for slowdowns, redundancies and errors.

• Leveraging regional/national/global advantages

Not doubting that it’s preferable to source goods and services more cheaply. It requires the understanding and balancing of several factors including, currency fluctuations, labor rates, material costs, and freight/shipping costs. And it requires a vendor with a large regional/national/global footprint.

Next up: Distribution based solutions

Questions? Drop me a note!