Issue 1- September 2008
Dynamic Publishing Process with QuarkXPress Server Boosts Marketing Operations
By Serena Bartneck
Communications agency Pepper uses QuarkXPress Server to manage its brands and channel marketing campaigns — generating significant savings in time
and money.
The international marketing and communications agency Pepper develops global, integrated marketing and corporate communications solutions — from strategy to production to results analysis, as well as graphic design. Before implementing a dynamic publishing process, Pepper used a manual and labor-intensive approach to produce several different versions of advertising materials for its clients. For clients such as Hewlett-Packard®, a leading global IT hardware manufacturer and service provider, it was becoming too cost and time intensive to adapt key marketing templates to the demands and particularities of local markets. Pepper required a template-based dynamic publishing solution. On the one hand, Hewlett-Packard needed to maintain the company's visual identity; on the other, the company wanted to incorporate the requirements of its partner distributors, such as name, brand management, local language, and cultural specifics.
Pepper worked with Quark and system integrator Optiteam to develop a new Web-driven, multi-channel marketing management tool. The result is 2publish, a dynamic publishing solution based on the tried-and-tested QuarkXPress® Server technology. QuarkXPress Server is a dynamic publishing technology that combines the most powerful QuarkXPress graphic and typographical features with server technology to enable automated processes. The 2publish platform is a Web-based tool specifically designed to cater to the requirements of Hewlett-Packard, regrouping resellers in many different countries.
How it Works
When Hewlett-Packard wants to make a certain deliverable from an advertising campaign available online for the resellers, the creative team first develops a QuarkXPress template. This template is then offered online to all of the resellers that have subscribed for access to the Web-based tool. Some parts of the page layouts are locked, ensuring that the company’s visual identity and key messages cannot be altered. Other elements can be quickly and easily adapted to the local markets and requirements. All of this can be done in a Web browser by someone who has no prior experience using QuarkXPress.
Thomas Wimmer, Pepper Marketing Solutions Director, says: "Thanks to QuarkXPress Server and 2publish, our international clients are now able to access a whole palette of creative content. But at the same time, we can guarantee consistent processes and brand visibility — in other words, a global creation perfectly adapted to each region."
Today, over 3000 people use 2publish, creating and using hundreds of documents every month, and this number continues to rise. Hewlett-Packard´s international partner companies use this QuarkXPress Server based application to produce marketing materials in 42 different languages. There are enormous cost reductions that are achieved by using Quark and 2publish technology. And the time required by Pepper’s clients to develop marketing materials has been hugely reduced. Gone are the days of sending out more than a thousand page layouts from country-to-country for one campaign. There’s no need to supply image or copy, no need to hire a production professional to ensure that the color profiles are accurate, and there are no surprises when you go to print — all the requirements are incorporated into the system along with all the images and copy to be used. Thomas Wimmer: "The only thing that resellers need to do is log on to the system, enter their details in the box and upload their logos. A high resolution printable PDF file is then downloaded for sending to the printer — this is how easy dynamic publishing is."
