... And preserve Creative integrity

By Christine Carrington

With today’s tough economic times calling for catalog/multichannel marketers to tighten budgets on every front, one of the biggest challenges is how to cut catalog production costs without diluting the brand or skimping on key creative elements. But what stone has been left unturned on that front? Here are eight cost-cutting, brand-retaining production ideas to consider.

1. Marry and involve both your production and creative team members at the very beginning of each project. Their insight and experience will identify pitfalls, time-saving technology opportunities, and ways to streamline the production and proofing process.

2. Take full advantage of your vendor relationships to minimize paper, postage and printing costs. As the paper and printing industries consolidate, the relationships you’ve built with your vendors will serve you well.
“Volume speaks volumes” to vendors, since they like to line up future work just as much as you do. Use them to help you:
• identify lower basis weight or high-bulk papers to make your pieces weigh less, then test against your current weight;
• examine dummy samples with various page counts to see if you can make cuts;
• look at different formats or trim sizes that print more efficiently or offer savings in mailing;
• consider buying paper up front and storing it for future use rather than on a per project basis; and
• catalog size must sort and mail with the maximum discounts.

3. Plan purposefully, schedule strategically. Don’t skimp on the schedule. Detailed schedules are essential to a smooth, on-budget workflow and for stakeholders to understand what’s expected of them over time.
If one element of the project gets out of sync, the entire project could unravel, a potential disaster when immovable and expensive events like press time are looming at the end of the project. Effective schedules must include the following:
• immovable major milestone events that cost money (i.e., press time, legal reviews and others);
• flexibility for any unforeseen bumps in the road;
• ample time for proofing and rounds of revisions;
• specific deadlines for all assets;
• realistic time frames; and
• the schedule must be shared and approved by everyone involved.

4. Review agency, photography, printing and prepress estimates closely, then search out competitive bids. You can achieve very significant cost savings while avoiding very significant, unanticipated charges at the same time.
When reviewing agency estimates, keep the following in mind:
• understand and be comfortable with the revision rounds provided;
• understand and agree upon when redesigns, rewrites and reshoots become chargeable;
• review what is and isn’t included in vendors’ estimates — i.e., props, sets, location fees and other items related to the creative may not be included because the concepts are not yet developed — and develop a budget for costs to come; and
• read the usage rights — it’ll cost a lot of money to buy the rights for additional usage after the fact.

5. Use a digital asset management (DAM) system to create, store and access thousands of existing images. This allows creative and production team members to pull them onto your pages, Web site or ads quickly and easily. This type of system is totally customizable and can be simultaneously utilized by merchandising, creative and production departments.

6. Transition to an electronic, paperless workflow. Paper-based proofs eat resources and are time-consuming to produce. One way to save big on hard proofs (and to go green) is to go paperless. Electronic workflows benefit the schedule because multiple stakeholders can proof simultaneously in real time, saving the time and expense of overnight shipping. They also allow for batching image and copy assets, as well as seamless, instant downloads of InDesign files and PDFs by vendors, printers and publications.

7. Employ a database copy utility. Use a data merge program to populate catalog pages with prices, SKUs and copy. Database copy utilities (such as EzCatalog) provide a one-stop shop for copy. They let you update copy on their end while syncing with their agencies or creative departments, greatly reducing proofreading time and leaving nothing to individual interpretation.
Historically labor-intensive processes that bog down the creative department can be automated easily to save time and money. For instance, images can be autoconverted from RGB to CMYK, Web images can be downsized and drop folders can be created with automated scripts, alleviating the need for creative to handle these tasks.
InDesign and Quark now allow shadows to be made during design/production. This is cheaper and faster than creating shadows while composing the pages in prepress.

8. Try overseas vendors for certain jobs. Save time and money by sending work overseas for page design and retouching. Use more expensive on-staff employees for the complex jobs, saving money on less critical or routine matters.
Today’s tough economic climate is forcing catalogers to find new ways to save time and money while maintaining their creative integrity. If you plan to embrace new printing techniques, mailing methods, workflows and technologies, they must meet the needs of both your creative and production teams. The outcome of your project is a direct result of how people use new innovations to enhance the process.

Christine Carrington is president of King of Prussia, Pa.-based Catalogs by Lorél. You can reach her at (610) 337-9133 or chris@lorel.com.