Kyocera Keeps Johnson Advertising’s Ultra-Personalized Direct Mail “Rocking and Rolling”

If you’ve been in the market for a car and received a direct mail piece with a personalized, handwritten note on it, chances are it came from the LetterLab at Johnson Advertising, in Athens, Georgia. The thriving ad agency has built its name on “tailored” direct mail — printed shells that are then taken into the Hand Writing Letter Lab, where real ink pen devices handwrite every personalized element, making each piece look and feel like it came from a real person. President Ivy Johnson has embraced that identity for years.

Do an online search for "Handwritten Letter Guy" and President Ivy Johnson owns the results. Also known as “the King of the Autopen,” Johnson has a reputation in the space that speaks for itself.

"If you want just anybody putting ink on paper, I'm not the guy," he says. "But tailored marketing, I am the guy."

That personalization-first approach has worked extraordinarily well. But for a while, the print production behind it was a bottleneck. Johnson Advertising’s growth pushed the company into a hard lesson: if you can’t control production, you can’t consistently deliver the results clients are paying for.

At first, Johnson Advertising brokered its direct mail printing through commercial printers. Vendors repeatedly dropped the ball and missed deadlines, Johnson says.

“Our clients expect and count on us to come through and meet deadlines and meet requirements. And when I'm contracting a client, and then I've got a third party that I'm working with, it's just a terrible formula. It's constant headaches. When a commercial printer is busy with other jobs, all of a sudden you're not as important. You can't run a business without having quality control and production control.”

So, the company took a decisive step: it brought print production in-house.

Johnson Advertising first invested in toner devices to print its own direct mail pieces. It was the right strategic move, but the wrong equipment. The two toner devices Johnson purchased through a dealer were plagued with breakdowns and service calls that ate into uptime.

“The local dealer was in here two to four times a week,” Johnson recalls. “And every time they come in, the next day they'd have to come back out again, because something else needed repair.”

This would sometimes cost the operation a full day of production, he says, which clashed directly with the value proposition Johnson Advertising sells to its clients.

“We sell solutions that provide direct results – immediate results,” he says.

The Letter Lab at Johnson Advertising.

Johnson Advertising needed a digital press reliable enough to provide those immediate results and run continuously, month after month, without becoming a maintenance headache. So the company added a Kyocera TASKalfa Pro 15000C cut sheet inkjet press.

“It's been a great little unit,” Johnson says. “We run this thing constantly. We're doing millions and millions of impressions on it a month now. And it doesn't blink.”

He points first to the smart way it handles paper.

“The way the paper moves through the machine is ideal, because … it goes through one pathway,” he says. “It's a consistent paper feed.”

In his view, that simpler paper path is a major reason the press stays up and productive, compared with other machines that send sheets through multiple routes, creating opportunities for jams. For Johnson, this kind of reliable output is vital. The TASKalfa Pro 15000C has had a major impact on his business, he says.

“They print like butter, and we move on to the next job,” he says. “I couldn't be more complimentary of the equipment. It's been wonderful for us. The downtime is very insignificant.”

Johnson Advertising bought the inkjet press direct through Kyocera rather than through a dealer, and he values the partnership.

“We have a wonderful working relationship with Kyocera. They've been a blessing,” Johnson says. “They're serious about business. They're serious about their reputation, which I respect.”

He credits Kyocera with treating customer experience as a priority, not an afterthought.

“They want the optimum customer experience. And they treat us as such,” he says.

Because Johnson Advertising doesn’t maintain technicians and engineers on site, Kyocera technicians visit periodically to perform preventative maintenance. With production now stabilized, Johnson Advertising was able to focus on what it does best: building campaigns designed to feel personal at scale. The company specializes in digital advertising, social media management, and reputation management, but its differentiator is direct mail that merges precision print production with real handwritten personalization.

"We print the shells on the Kyocera. That's where the quality and the speed happen," Johnson explains. "Then those pieces move into our Hand Writing Letter Lab, where our real ink pen devices write every handwritten element by hand."

Those devices, an arsenal of real ink pens, produce handwritten notes, envelope addressing, and handwritten elements like post-it notes affixed to each piece. The end result is a piece of mail that looks like it was written by hand, because it was. The point isn’t just aesthetics; it’s response.

“We're finding over 98% of people that when you have a handwritten envelope, they're going to open the envelope, and now you at least have the eyes on the prize, right?” he says.

Because the recipient doesn’t see that kind of marketing every day, the novelty increases the odds they’ll engage with the message inside.

“If you're not doing tailored marketing, you need to get in the game,” he insists.

For Johnson Advertising, the Kyocera TASKalfa Pro 15000C didn’t just improve print quality or make production smoother, it removed the single most dangerous variable in the business: missed deadlines.

“Our verification and ship days … we don't miss them anymore,” Johnson says. “I'm not having to call clients and … ask for forgiveness anymore.”

That customer retention unlocks growth. Johnson Advertising is running higher volumes than ever, pushing more campaigns through the system, and planning for what comes next.

“We're growing rapidly,” he says. “We're grateful for Kyocera’s help.”

He’s also already planning additional print capacity — including a future Kyocera model he’s been waiting on that will print on coated sheets.

“We're anxiously anticipating their 55000 series,” he says. “I've got a standing order on one.”

For a company built around personalization, speed, and direct response, the Kyocera TASKalfa Pro 15000C has been the perfect solution. Its reliable performance and consistent printing have made it a game changer for Johnson Advertising. Or as Johnson puts it: “It's been rocking and rolling.”