 | From Chapter 4: The Sixties (page 117)
In the end, for office page printing, the Videojet could not compete.
But they didn't give up. From then on, A.B. Dick Company began to focus on industrial applications for their technology, with much better luck. One of the first products printed codes on beverage cans moving past the print head at up to 2,000 cans per minute. Introduced in 1973, A.B. Dick Company claims their Model 9000 was the world's first industrial ink jet ID system.
Running hard in that direction, they changed the name of their IDP Division to Videojet Systems International in 1980. In time, the tail became the dog and Videojet and A.B. Dick Company went their separate ways. In 1993 Videojet "united operations" with Cheshire, a major competitor, and in 1998 they acquired Marsh Company, a leader in large character marking and coding. Now owned by The General Electric Company, p.l.c. of London, England, they recently were renamed Marconi Data systems.
The moral of the story? One might be, If you canŐt fit the technology to the application, fit the application to the technology. Another might be, Unless you have the resources of an IBM or an HP, find a comfortable specialty rather than trying to be all things for all people. By keeping focused, Videojet (as Marconi) is still alive and apparently well after forty years. Parent A.B. Dick Company was founded back in 1884 and is still with us. Myriad computer and printer companies have come and gone in much less time. This brings us to this decade's "defining company."
From Chapter 7, The Nineties (page 194)
Chip Holt, formerly of Xerox where he is revered by many as father of the DocuTech program, shares insights on high tech corporate strategy:
"Corporate behavior needs to be bi-modal, consisting of defending and attacking the market. Behavior in these modes is completely different.
"Defending the market requires productivity, process excellence, certainty, and high attention to customer needs. These are the attributes typically ascribed to the Quality movement.
"Attacking the market requires innovation, risk taking, operating with uncertainty, and not paying close attention to your customers. In this regard, products are developed that change the market and give the customers not what they want, but what they will come to learn to want. Corporate leadership is required to keep the behavior of the defend mode and the behavior of the attack mode in harmony.
"Most companies today are over-managed and under-led. This results in a heavy emphasis on market defense with huge efforts expended in behalf of productivity and forgetfulness that the opportunity to be productive was originally created by the behavior in market attack. The imperative for change is forgotten in market defense behavior."
From Chapter 8: Conclusions, The Next Decade and Beyond (page 232)
Even though the media tend to feed off one another and multiply, it is easy to forget the other side of the relationship: the mind of the consumer. The media can multiply forever, but it is wasted without being partnered with the attention of the targeted audience. More and more messages clamor for a limited pool of human attention. Demand for attention keeps rising, but the per capita supply is fixed. This means it gets ever more valuable. Economists talk about "scarcity value." In terms of marginal utility, there can be some substitution in our "market basket" of attention. We can trade family chatter at dinnertime for TV, or sleep for a late night movie. But there are limits.
As the fixed supply of attention becomes increasingly in demand, the media seeking to access it work harder. In a crowded, noisy room to get attention you raise your voice. We see this raised voice in the ever increasing volume of catalogues and telemarketing. We see it in more and more messages plastered over any available spot-from grocery store "floor minders" to bus wrap. A recent start-up proposes car wrap: they will give you a car if you commit to using it as a mobile billboard. We see it in more focused messages, the increasing use of one-on-one marketing which our industry hails as an opportunity for more and more on-demand, personalized, digitally printed messages.
So, at this point in history, the increased demand upon our limited supply of attention is fueling the market for digital printing. More and more will be spent in ever more creative, aggressive, and targeted attempts to capture the limited supply.
How far can this go? For the next decade, it would seem this supply-demand paradigm will continue to feed digital printing. However, beyond this, a reaction seems inevitable. | DRA of Vermont, Inc. | 226 Handle Rd., W. Dover, VT 05356
Fax: 802-464-6534 | Voice: 802-464-5845
email: dra.vermont@printunchained.com
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