Digital Printing Technology in Use

What comes after computer-to-plate (CTP) on the printing-technology horizon? That’s what Editor in Chief Alicia Orr asked you, our readers, in the September issue of Catalog Success. The answer we’ve heard from many quarters is direct-to-press (DTP), which means means the digital imaging of the plate on an offset press, whereas in CTP, the plate is done off press. As part of a digital workflow, both CTP and DTP eliminate film.

Ira Gold, a digital workflow consultant in Rockaway, N.J., says that DTP has been slow to catch on, “We’re seeing a confluence of digital printing and digital imaging [DTP] technology.”

A recent TrendWatch report, “Direct-To: Are We There Yet?”, shows that 1,100 printers are again looking at investing in DTP technology, while 13 percent of service bureaus plan to buy digital color printing presses. Digital presses bypass plates altogether, sending an image right from the computer to the printing cylinder that makes the page impression.

Changing Technologies

Mary Lee Schneider, president of premedia technologies at R.R. Donnelley & Sons, explains in greater depth the two basic types of digital color printing technology available. The first uses a web offset press, ink and plates, and the second uses an electrophotographic press, toner and no plates.

Digitally driven DTP on web offset presses is a popular solution with printers because the digital technology is basically the same, lacking only the film. Even though plates are expensive, digitally driven presses are still cost-effective because make-readies come out quickly, and ink is less expensive than the toner used in plateless printing. But you can’t really use this technology to personalize because you have to stop the press and change the plate manually. “You can’t change the image as you’re running it; it’s static,” she says.

The other digital technology is the electrophotographic press. Using imaging technology very similar to that available in color copiers, these digital color presses are plateless and use toner rather than ink to paint images on paper. Schneider explains that “every time the imaging cylinder comes around, it gets a new charge for a new image. It picks up toner, paints [it] on the page, that image is wiped clean and a new one is laid down for the next impression.”

Unlike digital imaging on offset equipment, digital color printing lets you customize for individuals using such creative elements as product photos, coupons or offers, in four-color. “You literally get to do one-to-one printing, which is great,” Schneider says.

One-to-One Marketing

John Sisson, senior vice president of Internet at XYAN.com and former general manager of Banta Integrated Media, has 15 years of experience with printing technology. He says digital color printing’s benefit is the ability to precisely target using print, so a specific piece generates higher revenue and response rates.

Digital printing makes sense when a cataloger has items of high value to sell and a set strategy about selling deeper into the existing customer base.

Rex Ciavola, vice president of catalog production for Viking Office Products, says four-color variable digital printing generates some of Viking’s highest response rates. “But you have to use it very carefully, since it is ... so expensive” on a per-page basis, he says. “We use it periodically, to specific customer segments, to generate or improve response rates, retention, or an increased average order size,” he says.

The Customization Continuum

Let’s back up. Schneider says there is a “continuum of customization” enabled by progressive printing technologies.

On offset equipment, she says, you can do “straightforward, multiple-run versioning” for something as basic as targeting products in a catalog for males and/or females in different age groups or different geographic locations.

For example, if you have 5 million people you want to reach, you could create a number of versions of different products on press, then in the bindery you’d mix and match the pages based on whether the recipient is male or female, lives in a city vs. the suburbs, is between 30 and 35, etc. “That’s the classic way to do versioning: You have multiple print runs, and in a binding line, your bindery controller will read off of a mail tape, and trigger which signatures for that magazine, catalog or retail insert should get fired into the line for that particular recipient,” Schneider says.

Further on the continuum comes in-line personalization, where you might print four-color on a web offset press, then customize a message or text with inkjet imagers either inline on the press or in the bindery. “So you get the scale efficiencies of the long-run, four-color process, but the opportunity to use some capabilities to customize texts. You can also do inkjet messaging in the bindery,” Schneider says.

While not typically lumped in with digital presses, new high-speed, four-color inkjet presses coming to market could be useful for catalogs, where inkjet personalization is widely used. Michael Graham, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Quebecor World Direct, relates that for one catalog, “We did 37 version changes with inkjetting (as opposed to black-plate changes.) What you get is mass customization at high rates of speed, which drives costs down.”

Next come the variable printing possibilities. Highly variable catalog covers targeted to an individual have proved very successful in generating response, since they mix the efficiency of offset speeds (used on the core book) with the personalizing ability of digital (used on a cover wrap.)

The ultimate in digital printing would allow catalogs to come off the press uniquely addressed, from cover to cover, to one person. For now, many catalogers are using a mixture of the print strategies on the customization continuum.

Schneider says when making the decision on which length of print run to use various printing platforms, it’s best to consult with your printer. Page count and number of impressions are decisive factors. Also, toner-based digital presses may require special paper.

Other Uses of Digital Print

Magazine conglomerates are experimenting with hybrid, totally personalized magazines tailored to customers’ favorite sections from different titles. Another big use for digital variable printing has been collateral for corporate or advertising projects, often driven by customers on the Web (Web-to-print). R.R. Donnelley is also looking at ways to work digital printing into the fulfillment process, especially for package inserts: “based on what’s in inventory and what the customer’s already bought, creating an on-the-fly clearance catalog that goes in the box,” Schneider says. The problem, she explains, is whether, as the box comes down the line to ship, you have the real-time data you need to match the customer’s want with what you have.

Drawbacks

A main drawback to digital printing so far has been its cost: At an estimated $0.25 to $5 per page, it’s generally too expensive for use in prospecting—its extraordinary targeting power normally only pays when the effort is spent to sell high-ticket items to a high-value customer.

Schneider explains, “Cost drivers include the cost of toner—when you look at ink on paper, 40 percent of the cost of printing something might be the cost of paper. In this world, 40 percent is the toner.”

The other major drawback to digital is the speed of the equipment. Whereas you can get upwards of 3,000 feet a minute on a web offset press, the same amount of product could take 40 minutes on a digital press, says Schneider. Also, the process for taking a digital product and binding it inline hasn’t really caught up with the need. So when will digital printing become more cost-efficient?

Sisson says the equipment vendors will have to develop new technologies that will 1) Provide higher-speed press output of a variable nature; and 2) Perform faster raster image processing, which turns electronic files into a format understandable to the press, yet will still allow for variable printing. Faster speeds equal higher productivity for printers and lower prices for catalogers. Sisson says he’s heard about technologies that would put variable digital printing closer to offset speeds, but it’s a wait-and-see situation.

Increased efficiencies at the printer are essential for a continuing digitizing of press rooms. “[Printers] get deceived about the expense of using digital personalization,” says Schneider. “Because the press has raw personalization capabilities, but you’re investing a lot of money in the transaction management and the database technology to actually get that press to print something that’s valuable.” She says Donnelley’s past experience is that roughly five times as much is spent on the database and transaction management infrastructure to run the press, than on the press itself. “So it’s not just a slam dunk for a printer to get into variable imaging. You need to have some intelligence around databases and integration.”

What Catalogers Need

Schneider finds that at the end of the day, what really matters is whether catalogers have the database information to actually drive those presses to the one-to-one level. “You could have a lot of data on who buys toothpaste, but given the cost, today, of digital color printing, the return on someone buying that extra tube of toothpaste may not be enough for you to spend significantly more per page. Now, if it’s a piece of luggage or camera equipment, it’s a different animal. That’s when you get into double-digit response rates,” says Schneider.

Big and small catalogers alike face similar print-mix choices, says Schneider. “Right now, the most economical thing for people is long-run [offset] jobs,” she says. The next step would be printing on sheetfed or short-run offset platforms.

“Then, as they become more aware of what sells to whom, they may decide to get into versioning … Then maybe they could get fancy with some inkjet addressing in the bindery. If they get really fancy, because they’re doing a great job [with their database] they’d combine long-run print with digital print for CRM-oriented direct mail,” Schneider says.

But to really tackle digital printing, a cataloger’s customer data must tie to the right images in the asset collection. Response rates will approach catalogers’ cost-justification minimums when they invest in capturing information at the point of sale, and then use it on press.

Sisson sums up the principles for using digital technology on one-to-one print projects: 1) Do you know your customers enough to pull out the ones for whom one-to-one printing will be meaningful? 2) Once you know who they are, can you determine exactly what they want to buy? Then it’s not just good data mining, it’s also good marketing. CS1