Printing is alive and it's everywhere. I saw something the other day that read "If you can read this printing ain't dead" that's more true today than ever. printing lives because it communicates, it educates, it let's you promote your message, and if you're clever, it makes you money.
The Peabody Public Schools in Peabody MA, not the kind of place you'd think of as a bastion of marketing and advertising prowess, realized they can create some serious revenue with zero cost using printing. The district has 3000 elementary school students that take home over 10,000 notices per year. Nothing fancy about these notices, they don't use four color brochures, or fancy presentation folders, it's simply an inexpensive way to communicate information to the parents. Some clever administrator, on second thought it was probably a creative fourth grader, asked a simple question; what if we sold advertising on the notices we send to all the parents?
The answer to that simple question; $15000 - $25,000 in revenue that can be put back into educational programs. Not a bad return for no additional investment. They're already printing the notices, they have a no cost distribution channel, students backpacks, and they have a captive audience in the parents.
So simple it makes you ask "why didn't we think of this before". These days with tight budgets everywhere enhancing the printing you already use is a great way to get more bang for your hard earned buck.
WHDH TV thinks the idea is news worthy enough to run a feature on Peabody uses printing to create revenue for the school district.
While your watching it, think about how you can use the printed items you already have to give you more value or even generate revenue. There's lots of ways to do it; look at how the Scott Brown team uses printing to generate revenue for their next campaign. More on this later.
