The Shoebox Print Market

One of my major career learnings related to marketing is the correlation between business success and a good name or label -- and I'm not talking just about the obvious case of branding. Commercial growth and development of an activity, let alone the products and brands associated with that activity, often depends* on its attracting a descriptive or catchy phrase. "Desktop Publishing" is my favorite positive example. "Network Scanning" is the first negative one that comes to mind.

So here's one we can watch: "shoebox marketing", as reported on imaginginfo.com, a site for professional photographers. They have an interesting item about Walgreen's using their existing photo printing infrastructure in some of their stores to take on the market of converting all those shoeboxes full of old snapshots that can gain new life being digitized. (The market need focuses less on the printing than it does on the scanning and storing it would seem, despite how the story is headlined.) So stay tuned!

*my statistical-purist side cringes at the use of the word "depends" as it denotes cause and effect. Actually a good name may come about or be popularized as a result of commercial success.

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