Print businesses have long been brilliant at producing top notch printed promos for their customers, while at the same time being notoriously poor - historically - at coming up with anything similarly savvy for themselves.

While I'm not sure that the days of "here's a brochure with a big picture of our new press on it" are totally behind us, I do see increasing evidence of far smarter marketing activities from the general direction of the industry.

Recent examples that wowed included CPI's brilliant but simple blank paperback giveaway at the London Book Fair, and an engaging edition of Pensord's customer publication, the Pensord Edge, that was notable for including insightful articles not from Pensord itself, but from its partners.

Upon returning to my post-Ipex desk I found a delightfully engaging mailing from Lateral Group containing its latest "Little Book", one of a series of five. This one is on the topic of print management and has been sent out to 4,000 customers and potential customers.

Not only does this showcase the group's capabilities in producing a funky, attention-grabbing print piece, it also contains plenty of thought-provoking information about the world of integrated communications management, and looks beyond the old print management model of cost-savings "doing the same for less" to decisions based around broader thinking and making print (should that be the appropriate channel) work smarter and harder. Nice. More please.