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Print #21 - December 2010:
Prografica the comoplete production agency
Sydney-based Prografica is a good example of a commercial print company that has morphed into an agency-type set-up and now bills itself as a “production agency”.
Take a look at the list of services that it offers on its website and you’ll see that “print and merchandise” comes in fourth on the list while signage, one of those print-related markets that has actually seen steady growth in recent years, is listed at 15th! Both services are an important part of what Prografica does but listing them in this way is a deliberate strategy to re-brand the company as a supplier of much more than just print.
Services that Prografica supplies include website design and SEO but also email and social media marketing, media buying and campaign management-the sort of things that might be expected from an ad agency or a digital production agency. As an example of what this might involve, El Gabaili points to the fact that Prografica is currently monitoring and managing social media online for one of its clients. Huh? It sounds like an odd thing to be doing, not just for a printer but anyone, so how did such a service come into being? El Gabaili says the opportunity arose initially because the client showed little interest in doing it themselves.
“Not only did they not want to do it [in-house], but they didn’t even believe in it. So we trawled it, came back with all the chatter that was going on and they almost had a heart attack,” he says.
As a result, Prografica was able to convince the client of the need to manage their presence in the online space proactively. The pay-off for the client is not just in helping to defuse customer complaints. By responding to customer comments- both positive and negative-in online spaces such as Facebook and Twitter, Prografica is able to provide the client with a group of engaged customers, people who already have an interest in current and future products. It’s a marketer’s dream in reality- customers who want to hear about new product releases etc and are receptive to the information they given.
Alongside the online services, print is still central to what Prografica does. Kerim El Gabaili comes’from a third generation printing family-his father worked at John Sands-and the company recently took over Crown and Anchor printing business to add extra offset capacity. It also runs a fleet of Canon digital presses as part of a co-operative digital hub.
Future plans include adding on an ad agency, amongst other things, to enhance the company’s agency brand and feel. As a strategy for growth, El Gabaili readily admits that it may not be for everybody and he emphasises that it requires a lot of effort and continuous learning, but at a time when many printers find themselves on the back foot and at the mercy of third party agencies and brokers, it’s good to see a print company prepared to take the fight back up to them.
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