Guidelines for Submitting News

To help you increase your visibility with potential customers, and get the most out of your Contract Packaging Association membership, we would like to share with you some simple guidelines for helping us “get the word out” to our 20,000 readers—and your prospective customers.

Did you just win an important customer contract? Reach a business milestone? Hire a new executive? Complete a major new machinery installation or capital project? Tell us about it, giving us the information your prospective customers would want to know. How? Follow the below guidelines, and we’ll consider your input for possible use in our print, e-news and Web ongoing news and feature stories.

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WHAT’S NEW? Provide one short sentence that describes your news, success story or accomplishment.

LEAD PARAGRAPH: Provide an introductory paragraph with more detail about the above sentence. Include the key points, such as the challenge, and how the news/accomplishment provides benefits to you/your customer.

Tell us what your company accomplished, the key date involved in the news, any key partners and technologies, and what main benefits the news or project has produced, is expected to produce.

Provide a quote from one or more leaders involved at the contract packaging company. Include a quote from a customer if this is allowed. Quotes should be meaningful, and not just “We are pleased”-type generalities!)

TECHNOLOGY STORIES: For stories about your operations—a new equipment installation, package design, operational initiative, I.T. integration project, etc.—please provide a paragraph or two on each of the below three sections. At each step, provide information that gives the basic “who, what, when, where how and why” of your story. Also, your story will be more valuable to prospects if you include key metrics.

• Problem, challenge or opportunity: What was the situation before your new solution or innovation? What goals did you have in seeking a solution or innovation?
• Solution (a new partnership, installation, etc.): When and how did you implement your project, innovation or solution? Why did you make the choices you did? What key considerations that influenced your decision-making?
• Benefits & results: Provide before-and-after comparisons for benefits such as savings in time, cost, labor, waste reduction, etc.; Provide some indication of bottom-line dollar savings, top-line revenue growth, profitability, payback or return on investment—and what factors contributed to these benefits.

ABOUT YOUR COMPANY: Provide an overview of your business in terms relevant to the above. You may include industry segments served, facility size, capabilities (e.g. primary packaging, secondary packaging, logistics, fulfillment, etc.); specific package/machine types; and other key information relevant to readers.

PHOTOS: For news stories, provide a photo appropriate to the story in a common format (such as .jpg or .png). For more in-depth story idea submissions, provide photos of machinery, people and processes in operation (as opposed to press release photos).