Teamwork works. . . this process went the smoothest it ever has, during what is by far the most radical change we have made to the QNBT product line-up. Congratulations to the entire team for achieving these milestones. Your hard work and dedication made this phase of the project a success.
Senior Brand Manger, QNBT / Georgia-Pacific

Background
Georgia-Pacific has long been one of the pulp and paper industry’s largest and most trusted companies.  More recently they have moved into consumer products, including their own brands as well as club and private labels.  G-P is the largest producer of tissue products (bath and facial tissue, paper towels and napkins) in North America with an estimated 30% volume market share.  Consumer products have provided greater corporate operating income and increased shareholder value over the last five years.  Thus, these consumer-packaging products are extremely important to G-P’s financial health.

Challenge
G-P knew that greater efficiency in the company’s supply chain would be required to help them bring these products to market more quickly. The design, production and management of dozens of brands and hundreds of SKU’s compounded these issues. The company suspected that there was room for improvement within the areas of packaging design and premedia production.

Beck's Solution
Georgia-Pacific was looking for cost savings and efficiencies when it selected Beck.  They got both.  Beck demonstrated it’s comprehensive, analytical approach by conducting a thorough audit of Georgia-Pacific’s existing practices, addressing issues and procedures in all areas of premedia and packaging design, including their interaction with the marketing, legal and engineering departments.  From this audit Beck developed a new compressed graphics workflow model, which reduced the workflow time by enabling critical steps to be performed simultaneously, dramatically shortening execution times and improving supply chain metrics.  Examples of these recommendations include co-engineering the package design to identify and correct printing challenges during the design process, and creating a design review process which eliminated changes to design after the commencement of premedia work.

Results
On G-P’s Quilted Northern Brand alone, Beck’s compression process cut the workflow time in half, improved image quality and eliminated rush and overtime charges, while introducing 39 new and revised SKU’s to market.

These benefits are the direct result of aligning people, systems and knowledge through the Beck workflow compression process, and were achieved because of the teamwork and trust developed between Beck and G-P during the audit.

The knowledge gained and shared throughout the process resulted in all team members understanding the issues that create inefficiencies, and working together to eliminate them.

Using the workflow compression process, Beck was able to meet a rollout schedule that was 1/3 shorter than normal and deliver the campaign at a cost approximately 1/3 less than what POWERADE would have spent with the Old Way.
Ted Leonhardt
Indusry Consultant

Background
The Coca-Cola Company is a significant player in the vast global commercial beverage industry, where approximately 1.3 billion servings per day are consumed from the Company’s nearly 400 brands. Besides Coca-Cola, the world’s most popular brand and the biggest–selling soft drink in history, the Company offers a broad variety of products not only in carbonated soft drinks but also in the categories of juices, sports drinks, waters, teas and coffees.  With volume consumption of carbonated beverages shrinking in recent years, it has been imperative that growth and profitability come from these other categories.

Challenge
One such product that The Coca-Cola Company wanted to grow was POWERADE - its offering in the hydration or sports drink category.  Although Gatorade is the dominant brand within sports drinks, Coca-Cola recognized opportunities in this market and re-branded the POWERADE product line with the help of a major national advertising agency.  After developing the initial creative, the agency was asked to bring the campaign to market.  Unfortunately, the timeline that Coca-Cola outlined was significantly shorter than normal and the agency said it couldn’t be done.

Beck had been working with Coca-Cola for over 20 years with its print graphic reproduction needs and had a reputation for producing high-quality work.  Since the POWERADE re-branding project was primarily a print campaign to run in publications and out-of-home, it was a project Beck knew it could handle.  Beck boldly stepped forward and told the POWERADE brand managers that they could meet the aggressive timeline for bringing the campaign to market and Beck was awarded the work.

Beck's Solution
Using only the POWERADE product logo image developed by the ad agency as a starting point, Beck created and produced over 80 pieces in 6 weeks.  Beck’s premedia compression workflow – faster, integrated, and with no outside vendors – was the key to Beck’s solution.  In this case, Beck provided both the creative implementation as well as the production services.

First, label graphics were color corrected and retouched for four package sizes and eight flavors.  From that a series of newspaper and magazine ads were produced - both a teaser campaign and the follow-up product reveal ads.  Beck then created electronic mechanicals for a full complement of out-of-home pieces - outdoor boards, bus shelters, banners, truck and bus graphics, and point of purchase materials.  The campaign even included coordinating sidewalk art drawings in several prominent cities.

Results
OnThe POWERADE re-branding campaign was an overwhelming success for The Coca-Cola Company, as Beck was able to meet a rollout schedule that was 1/3 shorter than normal and deliver the campaign at a cost approximately 1/3 less than what POWERADE would have spent with their ad agency

And the success of the POWERADE product?  Although Gatorade still leads the sports drink category, POWERADE has seen its percentage of the market grow steadily since the re-branding.  Most importantly, it has positioned POWERADE as one of Coca-Cola's major brands outside of carbonated drinks.

Follow-Up
Since the initial re-branding project, Beck has continued to update and launch new campaigns for POWERADE, including creating the artwork for the print version of the "exploding bottle" image and creating original designs for the newly revised packaging for the "clutch bottle".  Beck has also developed POWERADE’s design style guide that sets the visual standards for all POWERADE images in all markets.  Currently Beck is hard at work interpreting the latest POWERADE television spots for use in point of sale materials.  

Beck’s involvement with The Coca-Cola Company and POWERADE is a powerful example of the premedia compression workflow in action saving time and money while improving the visual quality of the product.

Beck did an outstanding job producing one of Turner’s largest print campaigns to date, TNT’s “Into the West”. Beck turned everything around in a timely and efficient manner, allowing us to stay on top of our deadlines. I couldn’t have asked for a better team to work with.
Stephanie Stockham
Senior Manager / TNT Print Services

Background
For a successful cable television network like Turner Network Television (TNT), it’s all about ratings.  TNT, a subsidiary of media and entertainment giant Time Warner, depends heavily on advertising dollars and cable subscriber fees to drive revenue growth.  TNT is one of Time Warner’s most successful brands since it consistently ranks very high among all ad-supported cable networks in delivery to its key demographic category – adults age 18-49.  However, the pressure to hold and gain viewers is intense. As a result TNT continues to expand its original programming and experiment with new ventures.  “Into the West” was one such endeavor of epic proportions.  This six-week mini-series, with Steven Spielberg as Executive Director, was a first for TNT and carried a production cost of over $50 million.  Each of the six weekly episodes was shown on three consecutive nights – Friday, Saturday and Sunday.           

Challenge
In addition to the significant production costs, the company budgeted an extra $50 million for promotion and marketing of the series.  Obviously TNT had a lot riding on this project.  To maximize the advertisers’ spend, it was imperative that the marketing efforts be successful and attract a strong viewership - TNT marketers were hoping that the first showing in the summer of 2005 would attract 100 million viewers.  A successful first showing entices advertisers to also back the show in second, and future, showings of the series.

To brand and promote “Into the West”, a noted Los Angeles entertainment agency created a movie style illustration and a typographic title treatment.  Beginning with these two key brand elements, Beck’s role was to provide design implementation and production services for the creation of over 140 separate advertising and promotional items within a 4 week period.  Only a compressed workflow method could provide this number of elements in this short of time period while delivering the quality level required to attract nearly 100 million viewers.

Beck's Solution
Beck has a long history of working with the Turner companies and their graphics reproduction needs.  This project was particularly noteworthy because of the large number of marketing pieces and the short time frame for production of the items.  Because the elements varied in size, format, color, media and substrate materials, extensive implementation design, retouching and illustration were required.  Pieces produced included magazine and newspaper ads, gatefold inserts, bus shelter graphics, transit sides, bill boards, and display banners.  The workflow compression process allows simultaneous processing of several steps at once within the client organization, the printers and Beck.  This highly-focused level of systematic coordination is the result of a rigorous audit of all aspects of the workflow process and provides the backdrop for producing multiple pieces over multiple mediums in a short period of time.

Results
"Into the West" premiered on TNT the first night with a 4.0 household rating and almost 6.5 million viewers.  In the age 18-49 demographic, it grabbed 1.8 million viewers, a remarkable achievement.  These numbers will make this mini-series a source of significant TNT profits and enjoyable entertainment for years to come.

The compressed retouching workflow ultimately saves the U.S. Marine Corps time and money, and provides the peace of mind that their work is being handled competently and in a manner not unlike their recruits–disciplined and confident.

Background
The combination of illustration and retouching skills with premedia expertise within the Beck organization effectively compresses the workflow process on complex, time sensitive, high quality assignments like this one for the U.S. Marines through JWT.

Challenge
The U.S. Marine Corps has used images of young men standing readily at attention in its recruiting materials for nearly 50 years. What better embodiment of the marketing message “The Few; the Proud; the Marines” than the straight-as-an-arrow look of a Marine in his dress blues with sword gleaming at his side.

Think this look is an accident?  Not hardly.  The U.S. Marine Corps relies heavily on its marketing communications to fuel recruiting. To achieve their goals, the U.S. Marine Corps and it’s advertising agency, JWT, demand a clear, concise look and feel throughout all advertising medium.

When Beck’s FileWurx Retouching Studio began retouching images for the Marines no documented standards existed for the account, and images would arrive in various formats: digital files, continuous tone prints, film positives/negatives and actual printed materials.  The process of melding these various pieces into finished images with the right “look and feel” was extremely subjective and took many hours, resulting in longer production times and additional costs to the client.

Beck's Solution
FileWurx retouching artists, in conjunction with the creative staff from the agency, developed a set of appearance standards for the Marines account.  The goal was to establish more consistency for the “look” of the Marine’s images—addressing such minute details as the color, button placement and collar treatment on uniforms, symmetry of caps, presentation of weaponry, and the posture and actions of Marine soldiers as bold, physical and confident.  By developing these retouching standards and integrating them with an efficient premedia workflow, Beck has been able to dramatically compress the overall production time for Marine recruiting materials - whether in the form of print ads, brochures, CD's and DVD's, out of home pieces, or websites.

Results
The creation of formalized retouching standards and the integration of retouching with Beck's premedia workflow on the Marines account have compressed production times to levels that are dramatically less than traditional workflows in which retouching and prepress are sent out to separate vendors.  Simultaneous activity on complex technical tasks helps speed these recruiting campaigns to market while maintaining the integrity of visual standards.   

Innovations such as these help explain why Beck, JWT, and the U.S. Marine Corps have been working together for over 15 years.  It is the type of relationship where team members routinely anticipate each other's needs - resulting in a deep, trusting connection.