Schawk's advertising production operations

They handle advertising production at Schawk in London, and that seems to be a little known fact in the agency world, according to the outfit’s MD, former agency creative services luminary Olga Budimir.

She says she frequently comes across a misconception that Schawk is purely a packaging prepress specialist – perhaps because around the same time the global firm acquired the London advertising prepress operation seven worldwide in 2004, it also bought the packaging prepress operation winnetts. There’s nothing wrong with handling packaging, but as Budimir says:

“Schawk in London has had a reputation of just doing packaging and it’s convenient for our competitors to say that, but it’s not true. Schawk made a decision last year to concentrate on growing its advertising business in London, and that’s why I came in. Now, we don’t do any packaging in London, as it’s all in the north of England. Schawk in London doesn’t seem to have that visibility though – we’re one of London’s best kept secrets.”

Being a “best kept secret” is never a good thing in the world of business however. Once director of operations at the advertising agency Burkitt DDB and chair of the Creative Services Group for the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, Budimir is the person challenged with removing the misconception and growing the ad side of Schawk’s UK business.

There is some irony in that. Budimir was vocal whilst in the agency world in the debate around the issue of brands ‘decoupling’ production from their ad agencies and handing it to production agencies. Now she sits on the other side of the fence, but the central concerns remain the same for her.

Magic and Logic, the report that looked into the relationships between ad agencies and their marketing and procurement clients, made many wise recommendations, yet Budimir’s feeling is that tension still often characterises that relationship.

“It’s exactly what Magic and Logic says: ‘Agencies are not good at demonstrating added value, and there is a lack of trust about the financial relationship an agency has with it’s suppliers.’ It’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy: the agency does not invest in training and creative services, the client doesn’t trust the agency with production and therefore they cut off the production fees and decouple. At the end of the day, production is not the core competency of what agencies do, day in, day out.”

Advertising production is exactly why Schawk exists in London, but with the muscle of a global organisation that turns over $548 million annually and employs more than 3,400 people around the world, Budimir now has the resources to invest in a belief in training that is muzzled in many ad agencies when it comes to creative services.

She says it was a surprise for her that, after a short spell consulting following the end of the Burkitt DDB job, she came into Schawk and found such a high quality standard. “I did not think it could be as driven by quality as the agency side was,” she says. “But here the people are as passionate and quality-conscious as any agency people I have ever worked with.”

The other surprise was the size of the organisation. In common with many clients that she now speaks to, Budimir had no idea that Schawk, which started as a family concern operating out of a basement in Chicago more than 50 years ago, was the huge global presence it is, with 62 offices around the world.

From the London offices, Schawk handles a wide range of work, from press adverts to point of sale, TV localisation, direct mail and online. The client base includes both direct brand relationships and agencies, and as any production agency would say, it sees itself as a brand guardian for its clients, with its combination of expertise, technology and project management skills. Budimir is quick to add that Schawk is not at the “cheap as chips” end of the market, but that’s not what everybody wants anyway, she says.

“Sometimes it’s not just about price, it’s about efficiency. When you can put all a brand’s assets in one place, it’s easier for the client to manage their marketing processes. You streamline the processes, and there can be quite significant savings in that. There might be two different agencies doing two different quality control procedures, so it becomes apparent that streamlining that and putting it with one supplier can save time and money.

“It’s not just about producing a file and sending it. It comes down to project management mostly, and we have project managers dealing with brand managers and marketers; we can help them write brand guidelines; we can attend pre-production meetings and get involved in talking about how a piece will look, and what format is needed, and that also often helps save the client money, because it can save extensive re-touching later in the process.”

Budimir warns against organisations taking the cheapest route, and the commodity view of production. Repro is not a commodity, she argues. It’s someone working on a document with care and skill, dealing with the publication or media house, getting a last minute booking, and it therefore incorporates a service element. The production aspect is almost a by-product of the service, she says.

“There have been times when a tender has been about the cheapest price and we have not entered. Taking the lowest priced option can damage the brand. We have people that are very good at dealing with the appropriate medium (publications, online, TV), with the agencies, and the brand managers – understanding the processes so that the brand does not get let down.

“You won’t get that quality of experience and service if you’re paying the cheapest price. It’s ‘big picture’ thinking, and not many companies have that.”

Not many companies have the technology edge that Schawk has either. The company established a specialist digital technology division by the name of Schawk Digital Solutions more than ten years ago, and the software offerings have grown in scale and sophistiication as Schawk has grown organically and through acquisition. The company has cherry-picked the best aspects of the software that has come within its control through that acquisition process, and the result is BLUE™.

Described by Schawk as a “next generation Graphic Lifecycle Management” solution, BLUE is a digital asset management system, with workflow management and online proofing.

“It really is a best of breed application and in its space it is very, very strong,” says John Kingsbury, senior business development executive of Schawk Digital Solutions. “It’s about controlling the brand and getting to market quicker. Online proofing is integrated so that brand managers can look at a piece of artwork, and make annotations, approvals or rejections. Other users see those comments in real time around the world.

“All of our past experience and the demands of our clients have driven the development of the product, and ultimately it’s a very rich, robust and powerful application that is still user friendly.”

Extensive reporting functionality is built into the software allowing managers to analyse where bottlenecks are occurring in project workflows, and Kingsbury adds that BLUE is highly configurable to individual client requirements. “No two clients use it the same way,” he says. Clients from fields as diverse as FMCG/CPG, pharmaceuticals, and media and entertainment are seeking efficiency in marketing workflow processes with BLUE.

And BLUE is simply one (albeit very much the flagship) product in Schawk’s technology portfolio. The portfolio includes MediaLink, an image management system; Envision, a template-driven page building software product; and the most recently launched campaign performance Manager Liaise – a tool that provides a transparent view into the progress and costs of a marketing campaign.

There is a potential danger in placing too much emphasis on technology however, where automation replaces a human element. The rise of automated systems is something that Olga Budimir welcomes but not in every instance.

”Sometimes a client might have a brand under licence, and we just have to get it right. we work to fractions in brand guidelines so sometimes we cannot use automated artworking – it’s just too exacting,” she says.

“It’s about getting the brand message delivered quickly, efficiently and to the highest level of quality. This enables our clients to grow consumer awareness and drive their sales. It’s what advertising is all about.”


•www.schawk.com
•www.schawkds.com