Episode 18. Theresa Hegel
From The Printerviews by Colin Sinclair McDermott
May 25, 2026 · 43 min · Season 2
About this episode
Theresa Hegel discusses the convergence of print and promotional products, sustainability in advertising, and the misconceptions about capital investment in the promo industry.
In this episode of The Printerviews, I am joined by Theresa Hegel, Executive Editor for Special Projects and Sustainability at the Advertising Specialty Institute. Theresa has spent 12 years at ASI, built the industry's leading sustainability hub Promo for the Planet, won the Jesse H. Neal Award three times, and co-hosts the Branding Together podcast. Before ASI, she designed front pages under deadline at daily newspapers in Ohio and Pennsylvania. We get into convergence, where print and promo are already overlapping and where the gap still lies. Theresa makes the case that the two industries share more clients, campaigns, and opportunities than most people realise, and that the main barrier is not opportunity but language. We also cover what commercial printers get wrong about moving into promo, starting with the assumption that it requires significant capital investment. Sustainability takes up a good stretch of the conversation. ASI ran a joint study with European partners and competitor PPAI comparing the carbon footprint of promotional products against five advertising mediums including digital. The headline finding was that promo has an eight times smaller carbon…
People in this episode
Host: Colin Sinclair McDermott
Guest: Theresa Hegel
Topics covered
- sustainability
- print and promo convergence
- advertising mediums
- carbon footprint
- commercial printing
Keywords
- sustainability
- promo
- carbon footprint
- advertising
- commercial printing
- convergence
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Advertising Specialty Institute, Promo for the Planet, PPAI
Places: Ohio, Pennsylvania
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