Commentary: Your Printer, Your Multimedia Solutions Provider

February 18, 2009 By Jon Fogel And Roy Grossman

multipage

About a year ago, we wrote that the real competition in the printing industry is not the other printing firm down the street, but the alternative forms of media that are available to marketers. In a short period, it has become very apparent that going up against this competition is not a winnable war. So as the expression goes, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

We used to be "printing companies;" then we tried the moniker "graphic communications providers." There are more and more companies (that you may remember as your local print shop) that have realized it's time to drop the titles and just figure out what it is they need to do to help marketers deliver their messages to their customers.

Senior management and ownership within the printing industry now are conversing with marketers on a variety of levels, from brand and promotional management to investor relations and environmental directors. The printing industry has gotten much smarter about fully understanding what media will be most appropriate for a given client in a given situation. And this new generation of multimedia services firms is ready to help marketers achieve their objectives by providing those media as part of a comprehensive, integrated communications package.

And just to be clear, we're still very big advocates of print. But we all need to evaluate print in conjunction with the multitude of media available.

On the Print in the Mix Web site (www.printinthemix.rit.edu), housed at Rochester Institute of Technology, The Print Council has presented very compelling evidence that the most effective communication strategies are a result of the blending of print as a vehicle with many of the "newer" media.

Procter & Gamble, one of the most successful and well-respected marketers in history, always has had a very simple proposition: Don't force customers to buy what you want to sell, but figure out what customers want to buy and then go out and deliver it. More and more companies in the "printing" industry have figured this out, and these are the companies you want as partners in the future.

Jon Fogel and Roy Grossman both are partners in MSP Digital Marketing, a new firm that intends to build a national platform in the digital printing segment specializing in sophisticated variable data and one-to-one communications solutions. Grossman can be reached at grossman.roy@gmail.com.