Universal Wilde Blog

PINE, the New England regional affiliate of Printing Industries of America (PIA), is the region's largest management association. Comprised of printers, graphic designers, mailers, pre-press professionals, printed materials producers and vendors, PINE prides itself as being the voice of New England's graphic communications industry.

Last week, we held four bake sales for the United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley's Family Fund. What is the Family Fund? It's a program that works year-round in the Greater Boston (and Merrimack Valley) area to provide families with emergency food, emergency shelter, utilties assistance, financial education, and more. It's truly a wonderful program and we were very fortunate to participate in their fundraising efforts this year.

Most people send and receive cards around Christmas; in fact, 1.6 billion cards are bought around the holiday. But what's the second largest holiday for greeting cards? Why, it's none other than Valentine's Day!

The average price of a Superbowl ad increased by 8.6% from 2012 to 2013. Although that may seem like a small price, it's an eye-popping $3.8 million dollars to air a 30-second advertisement during the most important football game of the year. With all that money being spent on half a minute, you want to convey a message that's creative; you also want your message to increase brand recognition and recall with the viewers of the Superbowl.

Over the past few years, you’ve probably heard a lot about how “print is a dying industry.”  But that’s pretty hard to believe when you consider the fact that each year, print makes more money than the music, video game, online advertising, and auto industries combined.  That’s right; print is a $640 billion industry, while the auto industry pales in comparison at $432 billion.  Additionally, print drives $3.8 trillion in related services.  In other words, print is big.

So for the past several months on our social media accounts we've been getting progressively more excited about 3D printing. Then we realized: some people might not know what 3D print is - or why we're making such a fuss about it.

I have a confession: I love Pinterest. It's my online inspiration board for food, exercising, quotes, and so many more things. However, I've never used it for buying products - just gawking at things. Yes, Pinterest may be good for suggesting several thousand meals you could make, but would you use it for holiday shopping?

I used to complain about the word “partnership” all the time. It seemed like such a buzzword, especially when the relationship between customer and vendor was really something different than “partners.” Truth be told, in many cases the word is not just overused, it's plain untrue. So when do you know if you're partners with your customer or vendor? The answer is not revealed when things are going well—it's when they're not that you'll discover what your relationship really is. My theory is that a partnership is all about an honest discussion regarding faults, without fear of retribution.

Five things we’ve seen (and liked) this week:

Happy (almost) New Year!  Since the world didn’t end on December 21^st, that means that we’re bidding farewell to 2012 at the same old time.  And as a new year approaches, it’s natural for people to look back on all the events that happened over the last 365 days, both in their own lives and in the world.  Luckily, since we are in the technology age, we don’t have to think too hard to remember all the things that happened throughout the year – the internet (and particularly social media) has documented it all for us! Thanks to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and the countless other platforms out there, we can easily look back on our year and reflect on just how much our lives have changed.