‘Spiffy’ means attractive, intelligent, smart and that’s just what Melbourne’s Intelligent Media has encompassed with its SPIFF rating system for DM print. Substrate, Personal-isation, Ink, Fold and Functionality. But there’s more to this innovative firm, formed by a stockbroker and ad-man, as Graham Osborne reports in the latest Print21 magazine.
"Nothing will ever replace the experience a person gets from something they can hold in their hands and touch, feel, smell, taste – all of those things that you can’t get from a TV screen or a digital screen or an iPad or an iPod or whatever else you want to put an ‘i’ in front of,” says print evangelist Shadi Taleb, director of savvy Melbourne digital print house Intelligent Media.
“With the stuff we make, the idea is that they grab it, they hold it, and we work very hard on trying to make it functional so they can keep it and the brand will continue to do its job. The functionality means people will be likely keep it around for a long period of time. Ask any customer, ‘What does it mean to you to have your brand sitting on a person’s desk for six months?’”
Intelligent Media has grown rapidly in just four years by delivering innovative personalised digital printing options to government agencies and large corporations. Since partnering with Southern Colour at the beginning of 2014, Intelligent Media has been able to expose itself to blue chip companies, offering a more holistic solution to their sales and marketing strategies.
“Being able to spread our wings and introduce ourselves to these customers and show them things that we could do really opened up a new world for us and we’ve kind of popped from that.”
In late 2014, Intelligent Media moved into bigger premises - around the corner from Southern Colour – adding to its already state-of-the-art tech line-up:
• HP Indigo Digital Press 7600, (upgrading to a 7800)
• Horizon finishing line comprising: CF-400 cover/folder; CR-400 creaser/trimmer; AC-400 accumulator; SPF-200L stitcher; HOF-400 feeder; SC-200L foredge trimmer; BVS barcode reader
• Horizon CRF-362 Creaser and Folder
• Horizon BQ-280 PUR PUR Binder
• Horizon RD-4055 Rotary Die-cut system
• DAEHO i780 paper cutter guillotine at 780mm cut width
“We now have the best machines in the world thanks to Currie Group, who have been absolutely sensational," he said. "The support I get from Currie and HP has been amazing and instrumental in our ability to be able to grow. On a service level they’re fantastic. They don’t muck around when it comes to making sure we’re getting the maximum output out of the machines.”
Taleb is optimistic about the company’s future but acknowledges the industry is facing a challenging time. “It’s no secret that traditional printing material has contracted considerably but I’m extremely optimistic about the future. Our approach is all about innovation. I believe that side of the industry is going to grow and grow aggressively. The industry is at a crossroads now where the skillset required to manage a successful printing company relies on leaders that think outside of what was previously known.”
A financial conversation
The ex-stockbroker believes his experience outside the industry has served his print business: “One of the things that worked against us to begin with, which now works for us, is that none of us that were from a printing background. I was an options trader or stockbroker and my number two, Allan Fox, was creative director at an agency – a designer, essentially. So we had a different perspective. I think it has been an advantage to come from outside of print because we were able to approach it from a different perspective - it's not just ink on paper. Our success stems from the success of the collateral we produce.”
“In my stockbroking days life was pretty fast before I met my now-wife and found that finance wasn’t really a life conducive to a young couple trying to settle down. So I created a company that focused on managing variable costs for businesses in the hospitality sector. We called ourselves efficiency brokers and managed their liquor, their insurance, their cleaning products, gas, electricity, telecommunications and their print.”
“At first we were outsourcing the print but then we bought a Fuji Xerox 5000 and started doing a little in-house, nightclub passes and so on. It was working well.”
Looking at XMPie
“In 2008 we happened to be visiting the Czech Republic at the same time that drupa was on in Düsseldorf. I decided to take a drive over the border and have a look. I went to the Fuji Xerox booth and discovered XMPie variable data and was really blown away. The whole idea behind that level of personalisation injected into a digital print piece really got me thinking. The opportunity for growth was going to come from commercial print with a focus on adding value to customers’ marketing collateral.”
Taleb held regular brainstorming sessions with creative director Fox to throw around ideas and map the path forward for their embryonic boutique print firm. “We were very innovative and coming up with different ideas and ways to fold paper and incorporate personalisation and customisation into print but we were unknown; we hadn’t broken into the market yet. We became very focused on paper engineering. We did a lot of research on origami. We did a lot of research on different industrial designs and not just in print. So, we thought: we’ll add dimension. And that became the way we marketed ourselves. We became known, essentially, as paper engineers, focused on delivering an experience to the end user that would make them feel special, that would encourage interactivity with the brand as well as producing high quality general commercial print.”
Taleb also produces a regular print innovation DM piece for agencies, encompassing the company’s SPIFF rating system. “We came up with an acronym that we use, to score things that we do. SPIFF means that we are studying the Substrate, Personalisation, Ink, Fold and Functionality.”
The chairman of HP user group Dscoop Australia seems genuinely surprised by the speed of his company’s success and says he's taking nothing for granted. “The business has grown year on year quite significantly for the past four years. We’re still a small business but we’re growing at a rate that we’re comfortable with.”