Issue #0809/1 - As part of its major product launch this spring, Hewlett-Packard has announced a raft of tools and resources, including the Marketing Impressions Portal, that are aimed at providing small business with in-house creative marketing tools to enable those businesses to gain more value out of their printers and increase the impact of their marketing materials. This is an integral part of Hewlett-Packard’s “What do you have to say” programme.
Like Oki (TCPglobal article "Oki v-studio offers small organisations help with document design"), Hewlett-Packard sees this as an opportunity not only to offer small organisations a higher level of service but also to promote higher printing volumes through the increased production of in-house materials rather than outsourcing the creation and printing. In addition, there is also the opportunity to win brand loyalty and encourage the purchase of Hewlett-Packard hardware with associated supplies.
For Hewlett-Packard, easier document creation, especially those of a creative, marketing and publicity nature, means more documents printed, which it turn means more pages produced, more specialist media purchased and, most significantly, the purchase and use of more ink or toner.
Even here, more pages printed is not the end of the story. Marketing materials are, by definition, graphics-intensive. This means that more toner or ink is placed on the paper (up to ~60%), resulting in earlier replacement of the supplies than would be case with pages of a business admin nature(5-20%).
As stated repeatedly, it is in the printer supplies that profits lie for manufacturers but, sales of supplies will not occur unless there has been a hardware sale in the first place. Therefore, this is where the real competition lies.
These new kits and packs are heavily business-oriented, some with a particular emphasis on customers using Officejet Pro with their HP 88 ink set, others targeted at any small business. They fall into two main categories: firstly, marketing tools and resources; and secondly, speciality supplies and value packs. In addition, Hewlett-Packard has produced a new version of its Easy Printer Care software.
For small business owners, start-ups or budding entrepreneurs, the benefit is in the time saved. Creativity is a time-consuming activity, so to be able to produce good-looking materials quickly and easily allows the individual to be more focused on creating and running the business and less on attempting to create suitable company stationery and marketing collateral. Therefore, this review is most definitely within the scope of Total Cost of Printing brief with the potential to save small businesses thousand s of Pounds/Euros/Dollars.
We’ll begin by looking at the marketing tools and resources, the most important of which is the new Hewlett-Packard Marketing Impressions Portal.
HP Marketing Impressions Portal
Hewlett-Packard has actually taken the concept announced by Oki one fairly large stage further, with an in-depth guide to planning, designing and producing marketing materials, as well as a wide range of document templates in MS Office formats that can be used immediately by any organisation – existing Hewlett-Packard customer or not.This is perhaps where Hewlett-Packard stands to gain most from this initiative because any creative worker can access the site and gain full benefit from all the resources and materials regardless of whether they use a Hewlett-Packard printer or not. In the long term, this may be a powerful tool for drawing those non-Hewlett-Packard users into the fold next time a hardware replacement is needed.
Once the principle and need is established, the site goes on to help users begin the planning process, getting their thought patters in order with guidance on how to identify what information is important to convey, how to present it and make it look attractive with graphics or illustrations, how the reader might perceive it and how to solicit a response from the reader.
Once planned, the materials need to be created and printed. Here there is guidance on the use and meaning of colour, harmonizing colour, placing text and graphics and getting the finished result right as well as what media might suit the document best.
Using the materials once created is then handled in the shape of coming up with ideas for how to place or distribute the materials to gain maximum benefit, encouraging users to think about what is most appropriate for their specific products or services.
In each section there is, of course, a piece on ‘choosing the right equipment’. Although this is pointing exclusively at Hewlett-Packard products, this is still of some value to non Hewlett-Packard printer owners because it gives advice on how to get the best from the hardware and materials – for instance, how to avoid smudging inkjet prints and how to avoid materials deteriorating before they are sent to prospects or customers.
Second stop – document templates and graphical resources. In addition to the getting started guidance, Hewlett-Packard has made available a wide range of MS Office document templates and an image library of royalty-free photos that currently contains around 200 high resolution images.
To go with the templates, the portal also contains on-line tuition in the use of the software applications that host those templates – e.g. MS Word, MS Publisher and Adobe PhotoShop. Backing up the software tuition, comes tuition on: technology and web skills; business skills; and networking, data management and IT infrastructure for IT professionals. This is all part of an on-line community that includes a discussion forum and blog section.
So that small organisations can compare the cost of producing their materials in-house with the cost of outsourcing that printing, Hewlett-Packard offers a useful print cost calculator within the Marketing Impressions Portal that allows a user to specify the approximate percentage ink cover of a print job and the number required (by comparing their own job visually with several sample pages provided). Users can then see a cost estimate for printing the job on a range of Hewlett-Packard printers and an average cost for purchasing that job at a local quick-print shop and also the cost of offset printing. A breakeven point against outsourced printing is quoted for each Hewlett-Packard printer.
Third stop - guidance is provided on creating and operating a direct mail campaign and choosing paper.
Finally, Hewlett-Packard is publishing an ebook, one chapter per month over nine months, entitled “9 Steps to Outstanding Marketing Success”. This book will be published in hard copy format in due course but visitors to Hewlett-Packard’s Marketing Impressions Portal are able to download it free of charge as a series of PDF files up to six months before publication date (chapters 1 & 2 now available).
For those creators requiring a bit more even than this portal provides, there are links to several advanced tools, template libraries and image libraries where users can purchase additional resources.
Each element of the Marketing Impressions Portal is very valuable to the small business owner and provides links to other valuable tools and resources. As indicated earlier, all guidance given in the portal points to Hewlett-Packard hardware, supplies and materials – no surprise there!
One tool in Oki’s tool-box that Hewlett-Packard does not have is the colour wheel for colour creation and harmonizing. Although Hewlett-Packard does offer advice on the power of colour and how to harmonize colour, there is no tool with the power and flexibility of the Oki tool to allow users to create a colour palette from scratch.
As with Oki, Hewlett-Packard’s challenge here is to get its own marketing right so that as many small businesses as possible learn of the new tools and Marketing Impressions Portal, regardless of whether they are Hewlett-Packard customers or not.
This is perhaps the key to the power of the portal – it is not in any way restricted to Hewlett-Packard customers – any small business can benefit.
HP Print Studio
A phenomenally powerful online tool, linked from the Marketing Impressions Portal, that allows even the most inexperienced business owners to create professional-looking business cards, letterheads and shipping labels in full colour without a second’s thought to design except which template is most attractive and appropriate to the required purpose.
It is amazingly easy to use.
With the built-in templates, I was able to create and print proofs of the business identity materials, with (existing) company logo, in about three minutes flat (the web site says five minutes!). Although there is only a limited range of designs in the current template range, there should be sufficient flexibility to suit most start-up operations.
If the range of templates is not adequate for a particular situation, Print Studio offers a link to the wide range of MS Office format templates contained in the web site (already mentioned).
In addition to these basic business stationery templates, Print Studio also has a range of personal projects that users can have fun with. Again, I was able to create and send to print an attractive 12-month calendar sheet (single page), with family photo loaded from my hard disk and placed automatically onto the template, within 90 seconds! No sweat! Perfect for gifts. Other projects include greetings cards, invitations and announcements and iron-on transfer projects.
For every project, before committing even this small amount of time to creating the project, Print Studio tells the user exactly what materials will be needed, whether Avery labels, glossy photo paper, photo cards or premium A4 inkjet or laser paper, allowing them to be purchased in advance.
AND … probably the best bit (for users) is that none of these materials, resources and templates are restricted to being printed on Hewlett-Packard printers. Part of the materials requirement information provided in the studio is, of course, a suggestion of which Hewlett-Packard printer would be good for the job but we’d expect that and it is not a limitation to the use of Print Studio – unlike Oki’s Template Manager.
HP Marketing Assistant Software
For those who need a slightly higher level of assistance, Hewlett-Packard has also launched its Marketing Assistant Software – a software suite that ‘guides small businesses through the process of designing brochures, flyers, presentations and postcards’.It is not free – it costs $99.99 plus tax – but then it does guide the user with instructions at every step of the way.
One of the ways organisations can save money is by printing a marketing document only when it is needed. This opens up all sorts of possibilities for customisation for a targeted individual and every document created with Marketing Assistant Software is not only customisable but can be updated with new and current information at any time.
HP Marketing Resources Software
This is a piece of software that can be installed on a PC, acting as a hub for all the other tools, resources and applications. It also provides links and manages updates to ensure that users are in possession of the latest versions of these tools.Considering how many elements there are to Hewlett-Packard’s in-house marketing suite, this hub is no such bad thing!
HP Print View software
HP Print View allows users to obtain a preview of complicated print jobs prior to committing the job to paper and to obtain an estimate of the cost of that job.HP In-house Marketing Starter Kit
Only available with certain Hewlett-Packard printers, the In-house Marketing Starter Kit gives buyers samples of various Hewlett-Packard paper types that are appropriate to marketing collateral and a Business Marketing Design CD that contains professional design templates and images, together with coupons to give the buyer a kick-start into in-house design.HP 88 Officejet Brochure Value Pack
Available as a supplies product, the Brochure Value Pack includes a set of HP 88 colour ink cartridges, together with the Business Marketing Design CD (as above), sample papers and exclusive offers on purchases from image libraries and design services.HP Glossy Brochure and Flyer paper
New media for in-house marketing collateral that improves on the usual drying time expected of inkjet prints.HP Presentation Covers
Binding materials and covers for professional presentation of proposal documents and reports.HP Easy Printer Care software
Finally, Hewlett-Packard is making it easier for small organisations to manage their fleet of printers (up to 15) with free download of its Easy Printer Care software – compatible with Hewlett-Packard printers only.
All in all, this range of support packages from Hewlett-Packard represents a superb opportunity for small organisations (and creative individuals) to improve the design and layout quality their printed materials, save time (an expensive resource), get the most out of their printers, maximise on the impact of their message and reduce design and printing costs where marketing materials are concerned.
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