How to Modernize Your Packaging Graphics Management Process From Start To Finish
By Bill Farrisee, VP, Managing Director, Latin America, Schawk
Executive Summary
As technology continues to change, opening up more possibilities, but becoming more specialized and complex at the same time, marketers and brand owners can no longer afford to maintain the status quo when it comes to protecting their brand equity.
But by continuing to subscribe to the myth that there’s ‘no cost’ for prepress, consumer products companies worldwide are jeopardizing the integrity of their brand’s assets. And this, in turn, compromises their packaging’s ability to communicate as powerfully as it can to consumers.
This paper uncovers the high consequences of the ‘no-cost’ myth and explains what marketers and brand owners can do now to protect their prepress and optimize their packaging graphics management process from start to finish.
There’s no denying it, the prospect of “no cost” or “free” services can be extremely enticing. But when it comes to protecting brand standards and the integrity of your products’ printed packaging, marketers and brand owners must fully consider how the “free prepress” myth could impact brand integrity and your bottom line.
By believing that there is no cost for prepress, consumer products companies worldwide are missing out on big opportunities. This commodity purchasing strategy, which was intended to save money is actually costing more in the long run. And it’s preventing marketers and brand owners from modernizing their packaging graphics management process.
The reality is prepress is never free. You will be paying for it no matter what a vendor tells you. In fact, if you’re a marketer or purchasing agent and you hear a vendor say, “There’s no cost for prepress work,” you should run away! A statement like this is untrue because the cost is simply bundled into the cost of printing. You’re getting a low cost on a poorly executed package. Just what you paid for.
With over 60 years of helping the world’s most loved brands prepare their products for store shelves, we’ve observed problematic assumptions about the cost of prepress, which lead to big problems for marketers and the brands they manage. You may be familiar with these issues, some of which include:
- Package printing expertise is not seen as a requirement.
- Marketers’ lack of control throughout the package printing process.
- Lower standards create lower expectations.
- Revisions are needed and standards are set by accident.
- The best price may not deliver consistent quality.
These challenges, common to many large consumer products companies, present serious consequences to the company’s package printing and to the brand as a whole. Let’s examine some of the effects of subscribing to the “no cost” for prepress myth.
“Bundled fees” mean marketers pay more.
This might not be much of a problem if a package prints only once and only at one printer. But what if that package prints twice or three times or 10 times? Then the costs of prepress are being paid for as part of the packaging price each time that package prints. So when costs are included in the price of the packaging, this often means the marketer is not saving money at all. In fact, they’re paying many times over unnecessarily for prepress with potentially compromised quality each time because a benchmark standard was never properly established.
Different printers, different results.
Consider what happens when package printing is moved from one supplier to another. The original printer probably won’t be happy that they’ve lost business to a competitor. How likely is it that they will send their prepress work to another printer? If anything is sent, it’s most likely the original artwork that was sent from their client – not the actual artwork that was used to print the package. Remember: the “final artwork” was modified to fit the particular situation at the original printer. The new printer receives the artwork and starts the entire prepress process over again. Different printer, different press, different specifications, different results.
Who’s got the final artwork?
The design and artwork that marketing approved from the designers will eventually be passed to purchasing and on to printers and the printer’s prepress suppliers (either internal or external). Suddenly marketing needs their current artwork. Where is it? Who has it? It isn’t what the design firm produced because that was changed by Printer A. It isn’t Printer A’s prepress work because that was passed to Printer B when Printer A lost the business. And it isn’t at Printer B because they had to modify the design for their conditions, which are different form Printer A. The hard truth is that nobody has the final artwork that actually produced the packaging in the market! Or, just as bad, there are multiple versions of the artwork, depending on how many suppliers were involved. Either way, you’re back at square one.
As you can see, the “no-cost” myth actually has very high cost consequences. And these costs far outweigh the perceived benefits of saving some money in the short-term. In order to optimize your packaging graphics management process and take control of the quality of your branded materials, here are four things you must do:
- Maintain design integrity.
Marketing departments already have budgets for the design work that is required for developing packaging graphics and images. It’s a natural extension of the design phase to assure that the design is executed all the way to the consumer the way it was intended to by the designers. It’s the details that are responsible for maintaining the integrity of the design so that the package communicates as powerfully as it can to consumers.
- Develop a realistic budget.
In order for marketing to take over the complete management of the graphics reproduction for its packages, marketers must develop a budget that includes all the work that is necessary between the time the design firm is developing concepts to the time the job is printed. Once you acknowledge that prepress is never free, this becomes easier. Remember, prepress may be communicated to you as “no cost” and it may appear to be the lowest cost, but neither is true.
- Involve the right groups.
A system that includes the CPG company or retailer, the designers and a packaging prepress company is the best solution. By bringing the three operations together, the quality of the brand image can be developed and maintained throughout the process. Each operation can have various responsibilities but the team approach has proven successful for many consumer products companies in the United States, Canada and Asia, as well as Latin America, where a few leading CPG companies have already adopted this process.
- Let the experts help.
An experienced and specialized packaging prepress company brings unique value to the supply chain. The right packaging prepress company works with all the major packaging printing methods and packaging materials. It understands the print process limitations and can bring that information for the team during the design process so that the selected design can be reproduced effectively across a wide range of packaging styles and print methods.
WHAT’S THE ADVANTAGE?
The right packaging prepress company provides a color management system that works with the designers and the printers to assure that brand graphics are reproduced properly and consistently. In addition a print management process is developed to help qualify new printers and monitor the print reproduction of existing printers. The system provides feedback to all the partners in the process to assure continuous improvement. Some of the advantages include:
Centralized graphics elements deliver efficiency
A system like this centralizes the graphic elements in one location that can manage and distribute the packaging graphics to all the partners in the supply chain. This way a consumer products company has control and has the opportunity to repurpose their graphics for various marketing needs whether it’s packaging, point-of-purchase displays, sell sheets/brochures, or web pages.
Digital asset management delivers efficiency
Digital asset management (DAM) systems are available to help consumer products companies gain better control of their packaging graphics, speed the approval process, allow for more thorough and complete communication and allow internal and external supplier access to information globally, seven days per week, 24 hours a day.
Measureable results
All this leads to improved speed to market, which drives sales and reduces costs. A recent case study shows how a major consumers products company in the U.S. was able to reduce time to market from 16 weeks to four weeks, while reducing artwork rework by 50 percent and costs by 20 percent.
These are just some of the benefits of working directly with a packaging prepress supplier and paying the right price for the best prepress services available. As opposed to paying the wrong price by believing that there is “no cost” for prepress. Utilizing a color management system will keep you from spending more than you have to, from impeding your speed to market and jeopardizing brand equity with inconsistent reproduction.
Your brand deserves the very best. Learn more about how to overcome the complex logistics and outdated practices that are impeding brand integrity and keeping consumers from experiencing your products the way they should.
Or contact a member of our team with specific inquiries.
Bill Farrisee, VP, Managing Director, Latin America, at Schawk, has 28+ years of experience in the packaging and pre-media services. As founder of Schawk Latin America, Bill has 19 years of experience managing businesses in LATAM. He received his Bachelor of Science in Packaging from Rochester Institute of Technology and MBA from James Madison University. [email protected]
Schawk produces brand assets and protects brand equities. Leveraging its 60+ years of industry leadership, Schawk! identifies and deploys scalable solutions to address a brand’s complex production and delivery needs through proven expertise in workflow, resourcing, color management and imaging. Schawk! is part of the brand deployment group of SGK, which is a division of Matthews International Corporation (NASDAQ GSM: MATW). For more information on Schawk, visit: http://www.schawk.com
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