Professional print buyers are too often underestimated.

I’m not talking about newcomers who’ve yet to learn the business. Give them time.

I’m not talking about occasional print buyers who are asked by a manager (usually against their will) to get something printed a few times a year.

And I am most certainly not talking about employees who handle print buying for their firms who but never “majored” in print – and never plan to. The print-related part of their job is minor and treated like an annoyance.  Or a hot potato. They never owned a Pocket Pal and never will. They do not go to print buyer events. They don’t admit to handling print work. They wish print would die already.

No, I’m talking about the pros. They have at least seven years’ experience and are grounded in print. Many have manufacturing experience. They are responsible for millions in print spend annually. They’re not sitting still, pretending the world of communications isn’t changing.  They know it’s changing. Their jobs are changing with it.

While they still handle a significant amount of print responsibilities, their roles have expanded over the past few years.

Some handle HTML work. Some have social media involvement.  There’s video production. Data asset management. Promotional products. Web content development. Mobile computing. A variety of cross-media applications.

They are content specialists – or as one of the senior-level pros put it at our PBI Conference last month: content purveyors. It is at once lyrical and practical. Today’s professional print buyers are given ‘content’ and asked to publish it in any number of ways – in print, on the web, maybe turn it into an audio clip or add it to the corporate blog. Perhaps it’s fodder for a QR Code campaign.

So many options translate into so much opportunity for today’s professional print buyers.  They are not pencil-pushing bean counters. They are educating themselves about new media and other ways to help their firms market their products. They are respected and consulted. They may be part of a company’s back office operations, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have clout and influence. Trust me on this one. I spent two days with over 100 of them last month. I listened to them. I learned from them.

Content-savvy crackerjacks, that’s who I saw.  And I was proud to be among them.

© 2010 Margie Dana. All rights reserved. Your comments are encouraged. You’re free to forward this email to friends and colleagues. However, no part of this column may be reprinted without permission from the author.