Printing and marketing related experience

Print Quality Technical Marketing Manager

Creo Inc. 1997-2005 Kodak Inc. 2005-2009

As the Print Quality Technical Marketing Manager I worked directly with Creo's product, management, and engineering teams to develop knowledge, technology, tools and processes to help enable Creo to grow from a small, single product, company to the leading developer and vendor of graphic communication industry technologies and systems.

I founded the go-to-market initiative - "Value In Print" that generated over $20 million in annual business, validated premium pricing and allowed for greater profit margins on sales of Creo's CtP devices. The ViP initiative played a crucial role in making the Creo brand the high quality benchmark in the printing industry. By promoting the use of "Staccato" which uses extremely fine printing dots to deliver near photographic print reproduction, our sales force was able to leverage the unique and proprietary advantages in Creo's laser imaging devices ("SQUAREspot") and take advantage of our customers' competitive market conditions where printers were looking for clear differentiators.

A few samples of the many marketing pieces that I created at Creo/Kodak. They combined technical and executive business information to help customers see the potential and extract the value from their investments in Creo/Kodak solutions.

The ViP marketing strategy also forced the hands of all our competitors and this strategy played a crucial role in Creo's ability to maintain premium equipment and service pricing in an otherwise commodity market.

Creo President Judi Hess explaining the importance of the VIP, and associated, initiatives and products that spun out of this very successful go to market strategy.
During this period I also published articles, developed sales and customer marketing tools, wrote best practices & guidelines that were eventually published in printing standards manuals. I also developed specific industry-leading expertise in halftone screening, imaging, plates and print reproduction technology. I worked directly with customers, educational institutes and industry thought leaders as well as internally with a wide range of stakeholders including engineering, service, software development, marketing, sales, and graphic communication.
My marketing efforts were so popular and effective that they were featured in other Creo marketing materials. Some of them were even republished by customers as showcases for their presswork.
Through my activities I became a world-wide leading authority on print quality and developed very strong public speaking skills, used globally at trade shows, as keynote speaker, in videos and most often, in support of sales, one-on-one, with our customers.

“Gordon has established technical credibility with customers - and competitors - by taking the time to listen to the question, research and then - answer the question in a way that does not leave that 'and this is why you should buy our product' way. At AGFA, we were PR and Marketing arch enemies of Creo, and often wished we had someone with his depth of knowledge - and communicative skills - on our team.”

- Michael Jahn, former PDF Evangelist at Agfa Inc.

Technical Director - Hemlock Printers 1996-1997Hemlock Printers is western Canada's largest commercial sheetfed print shop. I was hired on a one year contract to assist the company's successful transition from a proprietary Scitex prepress and film-based production workflow to an open platform PostScript and Computer-to-Plate workflow. During my tenure I also stood in for a portion of my time as acting Manufacturing Manager.

Technical and Marketing Director - Laser's Edge 1992-1996Besides word-of-mouth advertising, the series of monthly newsletters that I created for Laser's Edge were instrumental in helping the business to grow exponentially.
Hired as Technical Director/Marketing to take the small 5 person copy/print company to "the next level." Under my prepress technical guidance the company grew from 5 people to a staff of 30 and became the largest PostScript-based service bureaus in western Canada. The company set the benchmark for quality desktop publishing output and serviced such companies as VanCity Savings, Richmond Savings, BC Tel, Rodgers Communications, and most of the top advertising agencies in Vancouver.

Creative Director - Price Printing 1980-1983One of a successful series of do-it-yourself design kits that guided small business in creating their own marketing pieces as well as supply Price Printing with the material it needed to produce the resulting documents cost effectively.

As in-house Creative Director at Price Printing I established the company as an award-winning key marketing services provider for businesses where a traditional advertising/design firm's services were not an appropriate fit. I managed a staff of two other graphic designers and was responsible for account support, design creative, art and photography as well as presswork quality control. The unique combination of value-added creative services and quality presswork made Price Printing a competitive powerhouse and as a result, the subject of a buy-out and consolidation by Quebecor World