A printer organization + auto-replies = comedy of misuse

Oh the print publishing world, often they just don't understand the digital world. Lovers of paper and ink. I come from that world. From 1997-2007 half my job was designing for print and working with printing companies. The other half of my job was creating websites, emails, blogging, and working with social media. As a print designer I regularly received promotions from print companies. Ever since companies took to the internet in the late 90s, printers have tried to prove the value of print.

Lately they've been admitting they need to incorporate digital media into the print strategy and the results sometimes are quite funny. There's a printers show in Chicago called Graph EXPO 2012. I tweeted them asking if they will have anything about e-ink at their show.


Instead of a human response, I got an AUTOMATED @reply:


Lovely. Instead of answering my question, they just have a bot spewing off AUTOMATED responses. So I replied with:


And again, I didn't get a real response, instead now I got an an AUTOMATED DM:


I always get a kick out of print organizations that try to reinforce the value of print and how it's not dying. I agree with that. But it's just funny to see how they go about it. They try to give advice on social media and digital formats, but they always end up repeating the same basic advice. I was really hoping that this organization would be on the ball with e-ink technology, as that's a medium that is truly merging the print world with the digital world.

But instead I got all this garbage auto-replies, reinforcing how most printing companies just don't fully understand digital. I appreciate their efforts to use twitter. That's cool. If printmediacentr reads this blog post, I hope that at some point they give me a human response. Or perhaps they see twitter as like a printing press. You turn the machine on and treat it like a machine. But any good pressman would know that a printing press takes time and attention. There's nuances and subtleties to a press that require time and attention. If a printing company treats twitter like their press, then they should give twitter more personal attention.

I responded back to their impersonal DM with,


Maybe they don't know what e-ink is.