DIGITAL WORKFLOW:
PRACTICES VS. PREJUDICES

The ongoing task of bringing all employees onto the same page in an increasingly digital workplace is as much about attitudes as it is about opportunities, panelists agreed at a Monday discussion of digital workflow.

Topics ranged from maximizing "creative assets" in the ad department and tracking production to electronic tearsheets and ad transmission. But the messages consistently focused on the need to change attitudes among workers and customers to take full advantage of opportunities.

Jeff Turner, president of J.J. Grace Inc., a division of TC Advertising in Van Nuys, Calif., decried the status quo that allows sales reps to become order takers and fails to tap digital tools as sales tools. "Pre-press must push technology onto sales," he said. "It will never happen if pre-press doesn’t push."

Instead, Turner seeks to create a comprehensive sales environment arming sales reps with what they need to make or build on a sale using archived ads and ideas along with the new.

In a joint presentation, John Hazard, director of quality improvement and training at The Providence Journal, and Linda Natale, Journal assistant operations director, shared an Excel-based page-tracking system whose success was based on its clarity and ease of use. By building a system on a common program, by limiting its content to critical steps and by accenting the visual over the text, the Journal created a system that mirrors its production cycle and can readily be taught and understood by employees throughout the organization. (See related story.)

Robert Dagostino, digital advertising manager of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, explained his paper’s use of adPop, an electronic tearsheet system that has been very successful at the paper. He did admit, though, that no matter how good a system you use at this time, some customers will still demand to see paper tearsheets to gauge actual print quality and registration. Sales reps, too, need to reassured.

Still, he said, the system offers many advantages: accuracy, the ability to repurpose ad materials across media platforms, immediacy and shortened billing cycles, and automation.

And Alan Darling, president and chief operating officer of Western Laser Graphics of Valencia, Calif., portrayed the PDF, and its newer interation PDF/X-1, as important steps in eliminating the Tower of Babel of ad formats that chokes the digital-ad distribution process. Darling, who is also chairman of the Digital Distribution of Advertising for Publications Association, underscored the need for standardization. You can get a copy of his presentation outlining the benefits and promise of PDF/x by e-mailing him at alan_darling@WLG.com.

-Terence Poltrack