Q&A: Tech-EM Chats With Andrew Baum, VP-Marketing At Printroom

Andrew Baum, VP-Marketing, Printroom

Vital Statistics
Age: 44
Lives in: Redwood City, CA
Office based in: Santa Clara
Years at company: One
Size of marketing team: 5

Tell us a little bit about your marketing portfolio.
I’ve been at Printroom for a little over a year now. Coming in, my first job was to assess where things were as far as the composition of the marketing program, and to find out where I’m going to get the most return for our investment. Based on that comprehensive analysis, I’m reconstructing and developing our website as a destination and a primary marketing tool. We offer a web service with back-end fulfillment for professional photographers and fan photographers. With fan photography, we do the back-end for entertainers and sports teams, so that when they do any kind of photography at their events, we provide the e-store and fulfillment. Some of our clients are: American Idol, NASCAR, Miss America, Major League baseball, Major League Soccer, the NBA, Barry Manilow, and Justin Timberlake. So we needed to create the optimal web experience to bring professional photographers to our site.

We use events, trade shows, direct mail, e-marketing, limited print advertising, and associations with different kind of organizations and communities, both traditional and internet-based.

How is your approach evolving?
My predecessor established traditional marketing methods that, as the industry matured, became less effective. Two or three years ago, as photographers transitioned into the digital world, many of them didn’t have a service [for web-based] sales and fulfillment. It was like the Wild West with companies fighting to acquire customers.

Now it’s a situation where many of the customers at trade shows and events already have an association, and it’s much more difficult to get them to switch from one service to another. Also, the majority of the photographers that go to traditional events have a service, while the photographers that are new to the field [and may not have a service] don’t go to these traditional events.

What we’ve done is looked at the market and assessed where the best return is. We’ve found that traditional trade shows and print advertising have become much less effective. Also, it’s hard to acquire a customer at a trade show, and it’s hard to track returns from print advertising. So I have reduced the number of trade shows we attend. We still maintain a strong presence and brand at the most important trade shows, but have scaled back our costs appropriately. And I’ve put more money in internet-based and e-marketing-based customer acquisition, as well as networking with new and evolving associations and communities.

Are you doing any other kind of events or creating any of your own events?
We do virtual events where we provide classes and introductions to our programs via the web and through live web conference video and audio calls. We’d like to use that more. The key to us is that the photographers see our service and understand what we’re offering in real time. That’s difficult to do that in a trade show environment when you’ve got a lot of people around and it’s hard to get near a computer. This way [the customer] can do it in their own home, they can see what we offer, go with us, and ask questions as they see on their screen what our tools are.

What is your definition of experiential marketing?
My definition of experiential marketing is using marketing mechanisms and tools that draw the interested party into the products and services so that they see how it will benefit them. The way we do that is through classes—and also at trade shows.

At trade shows, our whole booth generally centers around this kind of experiential marketing in that we provide speakers and photographers that do a photo shoot in our booth. For that photo shoot, we have models and we have a theme, and the speaker explains what is going on and gives tips for getting the best photos out of the shoot. We invite the photographers from the audience to participate in the photo shoot by having their picture taken with the models. They get into the photo shoot, and they receive a pass for our website [so they can retrieve their photo]. They take the pass, go to the site, and see the experience they can provide their customers—but in this case, they are a customer, and they are ordering their own photo from the event, free-of-charge.

So hands-on is the way to go?
Definitely. The more customers experience what they can do with our tools, the more impressed they are. Through the different jobs I’ve had at Apple, Sun, Macromedia and the like, I’ve learned that the better your target audience understands how your product is going to help them, the more they will attach to it and take it on. Especially when it’s coming from a peer [i.e. another photographer] exemplifying how the tool or service helps them. It’s not only that they’re participating, but that a respected peer that is showing them how it benefits their business.

You just mentioned some big high tech companies. How did you decide to make the transition from a huge company, to a young and up-and-coming company?
I wanted to have more flexibility, more responsibility, and more accountability. And I like the energy and eagerness in a growing company. When you have the firepower of Apple, Macromedia, and companies like that behind you, you can make a lot of things happen quick. But once it does happen, it gets into the engine, and it’s harder to get through the bureaucracy and the administration. When you have a small company and everybody has the same vision, you can make things happen instantaneously. And that’s what we’re doing. We’re evolving our model—I wouldn’t have been able to change the marketing strategies this quickly at a big corporation. It would’ve had to go through many levels of management and I would’ve had to change the existing protocols to do that. Here, I can help develop the protocols and processes and make changes on a dime—and see the results very quickly as well.

Tell us about you. What do you do when you’re not at work?
Most of my free time right now goes to my baby daughter. She’s a joy. She can brighten up any day. As far as other hobbies, I cartoon and draw in my free time, as well as garden, and rollerblade.