How Color Print Tricks the Eye

Consider for a moment the marvel that is color printing.

It uses a scientific trick of lightwaves - Metamerism - plus engineering marvels that electrostatically charge a piece of media in very specific places, then release precisely placed, incredibly small grains of colored toner, and a developer fluid that reacts with the fuser's heat to bond those particles, all to trick your eye into thinking that a reflective surface is an emitting surface.

Hundreds of times a minute.

Or spray micro-drops of ink from two directions at once as the media rolls by.

And the controlled combination of colored toners or inks trick our eyes into interpreting a reflective surface as if it were an emitting surface. This is a trick worthy of magic, but really, it's science.

Here is a basic explanation of the color spaces involved with printing.

Simply put, the Cyan, Magenta and Yellow printing inks cancel out the Red, Green & Blue wavelengths of light coming to our eyes from the media's surface, metamerizing the wavelengths, tricking our biological processor into thinking it is the RGB of our human color vision.

Why red, green and blue? You may remember from science lessons in school - visible light is a spectrum of light, described as frequencies, ranging from reds through the colors of the rainbow into blues and purples.

From a scientific point of view, light can be a mixture of any of those monochromes, light of a single frequency.

However, we have light-sensing cells called cones in the retina of our eyes to detect the amount of light in the red, green and blue areas of the spectrum. Because of this, “true” monochromatic yellow light, which lies between red and green on the spectrum, is indistinguishable from a mixture of monochromatic red and green light.

From a design point of view, since we can’t perceive the difference, it simply does not matter, and so we can abstract any color we can see as a mixture of red, green and blue.

The science of digital color, however, describes color using the L*a*b* color model, among others, which is a bit less intuitive but more closely approximates how the human visual system works.

It uses the Lightness values of an image (the grayscale version) as an axis to rotate opposing poles of chromacity described as a* (red vs green) and b* (yellow vs blue) to describe the gamut of human color vision.

“But wait," I hear you cry, “You just told us human eyes sense red, green and blue!” That is true, it’s called the Trichromatic model of vision, and while it describes how the individual cones in the eye work, it doesn’t accurately describe the visual system as a whole.

Separating the human perception of lightness from color leaves the a & b dimensions as measures of chromaticity, brightness independent of color. This is important, as some colors appear brighter or darker, despite being at the same intensity.

For instance, we see a fully saturated yellow as a lot brighter than a fully saturated blue.

Regarding ranges, L is measured from 0 (dark) to 100 (light), a from -120 (red) to +120 (green), and b from +120 (yellow) to -120 (blue).

So let's look at the rods and cones mentioned above.

Human color vision takes place in the retina, and ends deep in the brains 's visual pathways.

The ventral stream (purple) is important in color recognition. The dorsal stream (green) is also shown. They originate from a common source in the visual cortex.

The retina is the innermost of three tissue layers that make up the eye. The outermost layer, called the sclera, is what gives most of the eyeball its white color. The cornea is also a part of the outer layer.

The middle layer between the retina and sclera is called the choroid. The choroid contains blood vessels that supply the retina with nutrients and oxygen and remove its waste products.

Embedded in the retina are millions of light sensitive cells, which come in two main varieties: rods and cones.

Rods are used for monochrome vision in poor light, while cones are used for color and for the detection of fine detail. Cones are packed into a part of the retina directly behind the retina called the fovea, which is responsible for sharp central vision.

When light strikes either the rods or the cones of the retina, it's converted into an electric signal that is relayed to the brain via the optic nerve. The brain then translates the electrical signals into the images a person sees.

 

Plant Seeds Now for a 2021 Harvest

2020 has been a remarkable year of change, coming at us fast and furious.

We have all had to pivot, adapt, and hustle in order keep on doing what we are doing. Business went virtual, meetings went zoom, and many of the business practices we all followed faithfully went the way of the dodo.

A new year, fiscal or otherwise is now upon us, and like farmers who plan to grow, we should be taking this time to tend our patch well to prepare for the new year.

The Farmer’s Almanac says this stretch during the last two weeks of the year is the most favorable time for planting beets, onions, turnips, and other root crops where climate allows.

Spreading roots is the best way to grow almost anything, including your business, so let’s stretch the metaphor a bit further, and see what we find.

PREPARE THE SOIL

Reach out to your best customers right now, today, and ask them a simple question.

“Do you have any money left in the budget that you need to spend?”

Asking that question at this time of the year is often a way to build relationships and make a quick connection. More than once this question has garnered new growth for my business You never know until you ask, right? 

Even if they had already spent their budget, it positions you for the next question – how might we work together going into Q1 of next year?

PLAN THE ROWS

Invite your top handful of clients to an “Assessment Session for 2020”, a virtual opportunity to define and assess pain points over the previous year. This not only positions you are a partner who cares about their business, instead of merely a vendor, it also opens opportunities for you.

• Transitions made,
• Lessons learned
• Opportunities lost
• Wish lists
• New revenue streams for your client

PLANT YOUR CROPS

Pitch ideas. Brainstorming together with your client looking forward to the new year is great way to add value for the client, as well as sparking ideas that you would then be a part of implementing:

•  Case studies
• A series of blog posts
• Email campaign
• Brochures or Flyers
• “New Service” announcements
•  Press releases

FERTILIZE WITH LOVE

Say thank you. This time of year is a perfect opportunity to connect on a human level. While not an overt promotion, it does help to forge those bonds between us, and keep you top of mind with your customers. Extravagance is not required, just a heartfelt, simple expression.

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Which of course reminds me, I would be remiss if I myself did not take this opportunity to thank all of you who have made my journey through 2020 as robust and fulfilling as it has been. My friends, both digital and virtual, my readers, those acquaintances I work with regularly and might never actually meet, the agencies who help me find clients, the clients who teach me so much, the poetry fans who keep me energized, one and all, I appreciate you, and thank you for your efforts on my behalf.

Merry, Merry Christmas, and a Happy & Prosperous New Year!

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Christopher Reilley is a print technology expert, QA testware designer, copywriter, former poet laureate, certified G7, and the creative director for The Bytesized Studio. 

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www.thebytesizedstudio.com

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5 Tips for Marketing B2B Leased Production Print Equipment

 

Not all commercial printing companies purchase their equipment. In fact, most do not. 

Because of the high initial cost of production presses, laminators, binders, guillotine cutters and other equipment, most companies prefer to lease them instead. 

So turnover is an element that needs to be considered. If you run a B2B company that is marketing lease contracts for B2B commercial printing equipment, these five tips should help spread your message in a positive way, to those who can best respond to it. 

Doing so will help you secure more lease contracts, thereby boosting your own company's revenue.

#1) Be Sensitive to the Life Cycle of the Lease.

Like a farmer enjoying his crop year after year, by nurturing your products in the field, with an eye toward both planting season and harvest season you will benefit from a long-term relationship with your customer, and vastly more likely loyalty at time of renewal. 

If you base your customer service protocols on the lowest cost model, you will have customers than can be enticed away from you by a few cents on the dollar savings.  

The term “Value Added” is used for a reason, it simply works.

According to a recent study by U.S. Marketing Report, 86% of production print business owners say that “customer service and support” is currently the number one metric used to base leasing decisions on, while “company stability” and “ROI” have slipped from the top spots.

One of the worst things you can do is have the sales staff/support staff essentially ignore a customer, only to show up when the lease is coming due. Keep in touch, be responsive, know where your customers are in their lease, and keep your relationship fresh, to improve your chances of renewal.

#2) Be Flexible in Offering Terms of Lease

You’ve sold the customer on your tech, they are impressed with your speeds and feeds, color quality gets the OK, and everyone is happy.

So why does the lease paperwork stall? There are as many reasons for this as there are customers. 

Your three-year lease does not fit with their two-year grant, or payments are easier for them mid-month instead of the first. You are asking them to make a multi-year commitment, however there is no one-size-fits-all model that works for everyone.

Production printers say they are often frustrated when they must alter their own systems to fit the lease, instead of having the lease fit their systems. Flexibility is a key component to customer choice.

#3) Offer a Variety of Equipment to Lease

One of the least appealing parts to being a guest at a high-end function is the limited menu. 

Chicken or fish or vegetarian? That’s it? Even if all three are delicious, c’mon, that’s it?

Just as scalability and flexibility in financing is preferable, so are multiple choices when a customer is trying to fit a piece of equipment into their workflow. Too big and it requires excess steps to fit in, too small and it cannot handle the volumes. 

If the machine that fits their exact needs cannot be located from you, they will go to your competitor, or if they do obtain a device from you, they will have to monkey wrench it into their workflow, successfully or not.

And when it comes back to you for refurbish or resale, you will have to deal with it. Once again, having options to choose from makes the ultimate decision easier.

#4) Provide Maintenance and Upkeep at No Extra Charge

This should be a no-brainer, and for a host of reasons, it is becoming the norm in the industry, as well as becoming expected by your customers. But in case you are still on the fence about providing maintenance, consider:

• Customer satisfaction
• Improved customer perception of machine quality
• Improved customer perception of lease value
• Improved customer use of consumables
• Improved lifespan of equipment
• Improved resale value of equipment

A great many manufacturers in this industry have exceptional service and support, and some do not. But very few companies market their service & support as prominently as they should. 

From your customer’s perspective, it can be a deal breaker.

#5) Market to the Lessee’s Heart, not their Head

There is an old expression in marketing, “You do not sell the drill, you sell the hole.”

So, you are not marketing production printing equipment, you are marketing stacks of printed product without hassle. Not bindery equipment, but finished books faster than ever. Not a lamination device, but a glossy sheen that highlights their print and increases sales.

Those shopping for production print equipment already have a pretty good idea what they need to run their business, so a dry comparison of stats is unlikely to make much difference. 

And, being human, they buy with their heart first, then use facts and figures to justify their decision.

Appeal to their problems, the hassles they encounter, and tell them how your machines can not only solve their problems, but provide benefits that make their life easier, save them money, or help them sell more product.

Marketing Leased Products Works Differently Than Direct Sales

There is a hesitancy in leased contracts marketing that does not exist in direct sales, even of the exact same product.

There is quite likely some potential customers in your markets that would not only be able to purchase outright, but prefer to do so. While these unicorns do exist, they are rare, and marketing to them is significantly different than marketing to lease customers.

Because leased equipment has a finite shelf life, and depreciation is not the customer’s issue, and maintenance does not add to overhead, leasing is often more attractive to customers. 

But there is a flip side to this, some customers assume that they can play competing salesmen off each other to get the better deal, or use your competitor’s marketing campaign against you when it comes time for renewal.

Only by adding real value to the lease as described above can you ensure your message is well received by your customers. Putting yourself in their place when marketing will help you shape your best message.

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Christopher Reilley is a print technology expert, QA testware designer, copywriter, former poet laureate, certified G7, and the creative director for The Bytesized Studio. 

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www.thebytesizedstudio.com

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 Better Copywriting Through Poetry

Ad copy and poetry may be distant cousins on the writer's family tree, but they do share the same DNA, and working in one, or the other, or even both, means you are always looking for ways to engage with the reader, to connect.

Like poetry, ad copy benefits greatly from what is not being said, as well as what is made plain.

If you have ever lost yourself in the pages of a book, reading for pleasure, whether poetry, fiction, history or any other storytelling genre, you are already familiar with one of the most important copywriting tools: immersion.

This simple concept can be applied to almost any copywriting assignment, whether email, a script, blog post, Facebook ad, landing page, etc.

Keeping this idea foremost in your mind will invariably make you a better poet, and a better copywriter, capturing and holding the readers attention. Any long time advertising specialist will tell you that you have less than twenty seconds to make the sale, first impressions are that crucial, but holding them gets them to act. 

This is why so much attention is focused on writing catchy subject lines, slogans and hooks.

So you grabbed their attention. Now what?

Every James Bond movie ever made starts right off with action, even before the story, so the audience is invested right at the start. Any narrative work that starts in the middle – in medias res – and fills in the storyline through dialogue, flashbacks, or assumptions, requires the audience to impart some of their own knowledge and insights to understand what is happening in the story.

In poetry, the parts of themselves the reader must invest in order to parse your words are exactly the things that makes that particular poem resonate within the reader.                                                              

So let's look at some of the ways the craft of poetry can help elevate your copywriting to an art.                                                             

Show me, don't tell me

Remember your fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Applbaum, who smelled like talcum powder and peppermint, when she spent two long, hot weeks in September repeatedly going over the five W's of journalism?

They just popped into your head, didn't they?

Obviously, I don't know the exact name of your teacher, or when you learned Who, What, When, Where, and Why, but by painting that image, I managed to bring you along with me, until the concept I intended arrived unbidden.

Consider this piece by Ernest Thayer, from “Casey at the Bat”

"Fraud!" cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered "Fraud!"
But one scornful look from Casey and the audience was awed.
They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain,
And they knew that Casey wouldn't let that ball go by again.

The sneer has fled from Casey's lip, his teeth are clenched in hate;
He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate.
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go.
And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow.

 

The descriptive nature of these words put the reader into the story, engaging them, and the same concept works in copywriting, helping the audience place themselves in the situation, which assures their continued interest beyond the cool headline or subject line. The only thing missing is a beer and a pretzel.

Haiku before Epics

While it is true that some poets use a lot of embroidered language and baroque descriptives to draw their intent, (Alexander Pope, I'm looking at you) a great deal of the poetry with strength relies on cutting through the noise with an observation or premise that says everything required.

Email campaigns, chatbots, cut sheets, and many other types of copywriting require concise clarity in order to be effective. Flowery prose can muddy the useful information.

Brevity is the soul of wit, as Shakespeare wrote. Never use a big word when a diminutive alternative would suffice.

Here is a poem by Basho Matsuo, one of Japan's foremost poets. Note how much is left unsaid, that you already understand.

In the cicada's cry
No sign can foretell
How soon it must die.

                                                                      

Engage my senses

If you look back at my first example, the hot September days and the smells associated with a grade-school teacher helped you to paint the mental image, and your mind filled in a LOT of raw data from your own memories, populating and adding details to your visualization.       

This never could have happened without sensory memory. We all have memories triggered by stimuli we tend to associate with a particular sensory component of the memory; the smell of the hot dogs on sticks over a campfire, the way your first fish felt in your hand when you took it off the hook to set it free, the taste of mom's cooking, the song on the radio during your first kiss. 

Sensory details are critical to immersion, both compelling and propelling, they enrich your story and immerse the reader through their own sensory data.

Here is a bit of Robert Frost  - “After Apple Picking”

I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.

Tennis without a net            

Speaking of Robert Frost, he was a big fan of structured verse, rhyme, meter, the many forms that had defined poetry since being handed down from spoken word truthtellers around the fire in a cave. The ability to count meter, adjust scansion, maintain a rhyme scheme, and still write sentences that made sense, turned poets into rock stars for almost three centuries.

Then free verse came along and dumped that apple cart over. Frost famously said that writing free verse was like playing tennis without a net. But poetry thrives because creativity cannot be contained. The same is true for copy.

The craft of copywriting has rules, like any other. You must learn them cold, master them, turn them into muscle memory. Only then can you break them when it suits you, to elevate your craft into art.

e.e. cummings broke all of the rules of poetry, including punctuation and capitalization. Here is a piece from “you shall above all things be glad and young”

 How many grammar rules get broken here, and yet, it still works?

 

...whose any mystery makes every man’s
flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think, may god forbid
and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:

for that way knowledge lies, the foetal grave
called progress,and negation’s dead undoom.

 

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

                              

Feelings and emotions

It is not at all difficult to believe that poetry kind of runs on feelings and emotions, but copywriting? The truth is, people buy with their emotions. The decision to buy is made in the “gut” or the “heart” and then the mind uses stats and facts to justify the purchase, all of it done instinctively.

Copywriters who can draw you into the story, make you care about the outcome, are far more successful than those who merely state dry facts, product specs, or ROI.

 There is an old marketing expression, “You don't sell the drill, you sell the hole.” Tell the story of how solving the problem made life better for the consumer, and the product will sell itself.

Consider this piece called “The Mask” by Kleis Val. Consider how the emotional aspect is resolved.

 

She smiles, I cry.
She is outgoing, I am shy.
She loves, I am alone.
She is amazing, I am unknown.
She is beautiful, I am a mess.
She is happy, I am depressed.
My mask is perfect:
She hides me.

Create Bravely            

A final correlation between poetry and copywriting is the ability, even the necessity,  to be daring. A poet can say anything, no matter how outrageous, provocative, or divisive, as long as he is following his form. So can a copywriter.

How useful is hyperbole to a copywriter? A library full of books have been written on the subject. I'm certain you can think of several ads that were “over the top.” But creating bravely does not simply mean being outrageous. It means trying something new, taking something that works and breaking it, or swimming against the tide of your competition.

Elevate your ad copy to the level of political statement (if appropriate), social justice warrior, or educator. Use poetic elements like allegory, metaphor, or simile to evoke a broader response than your copy might warrant. Or simply say something that we need to hear, instead of want to hear.

Consider the much loved poem by Maya Angelou, “Still I Rise.” 

’You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.’

 

Powerful words, and emotions, are the key to unlocking the readers attention, and immersion in your copy is the best way to ensure that the reader invests themselves into what they read, makes the emotional decision to heed your call to action, and follows through with the ultimate sale.

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Christopher Reilley is a print technology expert, QA testware designer, copywriter, former poet laureate, certified G7, and the creative director for The Bytesized Studio. 

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www.thebytesizedstudio.com

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