NOTEBOOK: Adobe Insider: What Printers Had to Say, And What's Next

By luck and some serious fly time, I was able to join the “big summit” at Adobe's San Francisco offices last month. Most readers by now are aware of the flap over the latest version of PDF, wherein a perfidious button lets customers—yours, mine or RR Donnelley's—select Kinko's alone as its print-for-pay output choice.

The ninety minute meeting with Adobe surely represents a turning point in our field. It was unprecedented—the entire U.S. print industry moving in concert toward one purpose.

“There is nothing like a common enemy to build unity,” noted attendee Carl Gerhardt, printer and CEO of Allegra Network, the $369 million parent of American Speedy, Signs Now, et al. Despite the building outrage over the strategic relationship between Adobe and Fedex Kinko's, all parties involved behaved with admirable restraint. Live and in real time, the event attested to the business sophistication of our industry's leading managers.

Association representatives presented the case against “the button” vigorously, but with decorum and a tenor of mutual respect—a hallmark of our industry's culture. Mike Makin, advocating unwaveringly on behalf of members as CEO of PIA/GATF, insisted the button must go. He also coached the conversation to practical outcomes, with positive results.

For the quickly formed coalition of franchises and independent quick printers and inplants, NAQP/NAPL exec Steve Johnson delivered with insistent professionalism their message: the button must go. Individual members of the coalition from Minuteman Press, AlphaGraphics, ICED, Franchise Services (PIP/Sir Speedy) and others hewed to the single purpose of getting Adobe management to recognize problems posed by the button. IPA's Steve Bonoff expressed concerns of larger graphic businesses over the precedent-setting deal.

For their part, Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen and VP Creative John Loiacono probably expected to present a range of other opportunities for these disaffected customers. Credit the two with good listening skills and the ability to read the moment. They heard and moved with the group to a consensus.

That net result was realized in the August 1 news: an October update to Acrobat will eliminate the button, while Kinko's shops can retain their “buttoned” version unchanged. Adobe also agreed to Steve Johnson's request to temporarily freeze expirations in its Adobe Solutions Network—the searchable list of Adobe-compatible print firms.

Now what? Loiacono posted expressions of regret that this matter generated such an upset. And while it troubled printers that Adobe seemed out of touch with an important business base, when I revisited Adobe's mission statement and looked at the mix of its activities, it became apparent how the concerns of printers slipped its agenda. Adobe aims its Acrobat offerings at what it calls “knowledge workers.” Its financial filings rarely identify print by name or market share. Our industry has made Acrobat and JDF into printing tools, and Adobe has obliged. While the rapid advance of Creative Suite as a print tool tracked Quark's missteps, that product is geared to creatives and now goes much beyond a print-centric strategy. Through this Adobe has supported the print industry's need for solutions, as it has also advanced on its own path.

By its vision, Adobe erred in creating a nuisance for enterprise IT departments, giving server-based Acrobat users an open door to Kinko's just as IT groups are trying rein in outside print. Adobe's MAX2007 conference next month in Chicago, clearly shows it sees a future not in the rigid forms of motionless print, but in the dynamic presentation of moving graphics across all types of electronic platforms. That's a reasonable direction for printers and premedia firms to head as well—traveling toward a new vision for the term “graphic arts.”

bill.esler@reedbusiness.com