Companies with footers encouraging users not to print emails are being targeted by APIA’s paper – part of every day life campaign.

According to Tim Woods of the paper – part of every day life campaign, an increasing number of industry companies, organisations and individuals are damaging their business value chains by using email footers that suggest paper-based communications should be reduced.

"Slogans at the bottom of an email like ‘think before you print’ or worse, the totally incorrect ’save trees and email this’ imply there is something wrong with using paper, especially when compared to using email,” he said.

The promotional campaign is writing separately to every company, organisation and individual using these incorrect and unhelpful email footers, seeking their assistance to help promote sustainable communications media.
"We do not want to directly criticise businesses that are part of the same value chain and who fail to support paper as a sustainable communications medium. First, we are approaching them to seek their voluntary withdrawal of these email footers," Woods said.
Woods’ advice is for companies to rethink their email footers. "We should all have email footers that say things like: ‘Print and share this email to ensure the paper industry grows more trees’," he said.

"We all support resource conservation, so we should support print on paper as the only truly sustainable communications media. We must avoid falling into the trap of assuming that because electronic communications are new, they are more sustainable. That just is not true.”

Have you read the email footer from a CQ email recently? Take a closer look at the green text along the bottom. We’ve been saying this for quite some time Click on the picture below to have a look.

Here are photos taken from the last four weeks showing the new offices taking shape. Hover over the photos for comments and click on them to enlarge.

Mid May:

Early June:

Making Print Fun:

Accessing these old documents manually could be costing your business more time and money than you realise, due to the inefficiencies of this method.

Fortunately transferring that information to a searchable digital format has got a lot easier.

CQ’s new Canon ImagePress 1135 (an amazing high speed black and white production press with photo-quality grayscales) has a built in full colour OCR scanner with a high-volume batch document scanning solution called “imageWARE Scan Manager”.

This solution offers robust high-speed OCR document scanning at an affordable price. Features include full colour file compression, bar code and forms recognition and automatic indexing.

Once scanned the fully indexed and searchable documents can be emailed directly from the ImagePress, or uploaded onto FTP servers, removable hard drives or CD’s/DVD’s.

For a demonstration and free trial contact Dean at dean@cq.co.nz

So what is latex printing? …

• a new large format digital print technology
• designed to produce high quality permanent outdoor & indoor applications
• using water-based latex inks with the environment in mind.

New applications for this printer include event banners, bus shelters, vehicle wraps, POS Posters, Exhibition Graphics, window graphics, lightboxes and Wallpaper!

Yes, you heard us… Wallpaper!

Here’s another idea - Garage Doors!

How do you like these garage door graphics?  We just need a crazy design and we can print these on our new latex printer so let your imagination go wild, get creative and can try something new.

These images are printed and attached to the outside of  garage doors so it looks as though the doors are open with something random inside.

Latex printing is also featured on the Green Poster page on our CQ Green website!

New Cool Print-to-Mobile Tools

Instead having people attempting to key in those long text messages or complex website addresses on their phone, we use the mobile phones’ built-in camera to do it all for them in seconds. i.e. The phone instantly captures specific instructions from a specially printed item. e.g.:

Just snap a photo of the barcode which then:

1. tells the Phone web browser to go directly to the product providers webpage for more information, even to buy the product or
2. prepares the phone to email or forward a special message on, with a link back to the suppliers web page with a special offer or
3. simply tells the phone to just save the details into it’s built-in address book or perhaps use the message as a discount voucher.

All this could be very handy if say you see a promotion on a magazine ad, website page, on a building, even street, realty or bus sign, and don’t have time to take down all the details. Now you’d just snap a photo of it and the special QR barcode (click photo left).

This provides the information for the phone to do its special ‘thing’, like sending you to the corresponding website on that product or property, or translating it into readable text. This will take off this year as people upgrade to 3G Phones.

N.B. Many Vodafone users here with a good camera phone may already have this QR capability and don’t realise it. Simply TXT QR to 710 to find out. They will text back a link to download the correct QR Code reader, for free.  (Details click here)

As discovered overseas, QR Codes in printed signs, cards or flyers is a great way to connect with a youth market that’s notoriously difficult to reach – not just because it offers something new and different for them to interact with, but also because it generates a lot of street buzz.

Why Wait? Simply call us to discuss adding your personal QR code to your next brochure, poster or business card .

Looking for more neat QR code ideas? View the videos below:

However it’s not just the compact  format. The design, content and offer play a big part too. A card that engages people, sending them back to your company website to buy, for more information or enter competitions is the real secret.

There’s one particular postcard campaign in the US that’s consistently popular and super-successful, breaking sales records year after year through a simple technique. Response rates are over ten times the industry average. Watch the video below, courtesy of Small Business marketer, David Frey.

Now you’ve seen how easy it is, let us turn that concept, into reality.

We’re experts in affordable variable data printing, web-to-print and purl marketing technologies. Talk to us about our new super-effective personalisation options and the amazing business results that come with postcard mailings. Phone Dean on 03 963 8899 or email dean@cq.co.nz

Instead of the usual standard squared corners, have them rounded on two or four edges. Already popular with many of our plastic credit and discount cards, now you can do the same with your business cards – for very little additional cost.  Next Month – New CQ minicards.

Call us on 03 963 8899 or email info@cq.co.nz for free samples.

Put simply, we’ll create a smart print queue from your PC directly into our production facility, saving time, money and hassle. It includes a built-in PDF soft proofing facility and auto-upload system. For large, complex documents it’s faster, safer and easier than using email. (Although we’re naturally still happy to accept jobs by email or on CD or USB disk)

It’s a tool not just for professional Mac designers using Adobe software. If you have big MS Office documents from Word, Publisher, Excel or Powerpoint, this is by far the fastest, easiest way to send us jobs.

To make things even easier for the home office Windows PC user, we will also bundle in a selection of free, expertly optimised MS Word or Publisher templates, plus image editing utilities to ensure a professional print job.

Email us at info@cq.co.nz or fill in the form below and we’ll set you up a free online account and simple instructions to activate your own secure, private print queue from your PC direct to us.