P+P: How does the economy continue to affect the industry?
JG: We believe overcapacity and mergers and acquisitions will continue to affect our industry in the short-term, suppressing prices as the end product output changes and becomes more commoditized. The speed of change will continue to impact the industry and those companies that are financially strong with foresight, vision and the ability to flex to the needs of the market will prosper and grow. That is why we’ve built NPN360° around the concepts of asset-light, fast and flexible execution delivered by experienced customer-facing associates. While the economy will have ups and downs in the future, we are trying to continuously deliver customer-appreciated solutions regardless of the economic environment.
P+P: What do you expect to be some of the biggest challenges the industry will face?
JG: The biggest challenges facing producers and distributors of content involve navigating the waters of the myriad of different marketing channels and what to deploy and when. Then, more importantly, hav[ing] the tools in place to execute the delivery of the message. The key to understanding how each medium—whether it’s print, email, mobile, etc.—fits into a specific marketing or advertising campaign is paramount. The marketing solutions and options our clients have to choose from are often overwhelming. And as traditional marketing solutions become more robust and complicated in a digital environment, we find that clients need our help and advice more than ever.
P+P: What do you think is the most exciting, cutting-edge thing your company is doing right now? Why?
JG: We are developing a next-generation portal that includes all the elements of a standard print and promotional e-commerce site with all the digital marketing tools that marketing is looking for today and tomorrow. Each version of the portal that we roll out to the market seems to have exponentially more options, features and benefits than the previous generation. We end up cannibalizing some of our business, but the commitment to technology is creating new additional opportunities, driving much of our new business growth. We believe this paradigm shift will continue well into the future, so we want to continue to position ourselves in a leading-edge position.

Elise Hacking Carr is editor-in-chief/content director for Print+Promo magazine.





