Are Printers Masquerading as MSPs?

This is more than a semantic change. As pointed out by Scott Dubois, vice president, cross-media services and marketing of Reynolds DeWalt, MSPs “have fully staffed departments (not one person wearing multiple hats) which include market research, product development, performance analytics and trending and marketplace strategy.”

He emphasized that true MSPs don’t have presses, but I would add that certainly, presses don’t take away from this core competency if it really exists.

The problem has arisen, not because some printers have retooled and rebranded, but because too many printers have rebranded lightly. They have rebranded without changing their core competency which, if they are marketing services providers, now ought to be marketing. You cannot simply add a digital press and some 1:1 or personalized URL software and call yourself an MSP.

You might be a printer with integrated marketing capabilities. You might be a printer with expertise in cross-media marketing. But to earn the moniker “marketing services provider,” you have to overhaul, not just your branding, but your focus, your strategy and your core competency, too.

If you haven’t done that, you should re-brand to reflect your new capabilities in cross-media, personalization, or Web-to-print, but you probably shouldn’t be calling yourself an MSP.

Heidi Tolliver-Nigro is an industry writer, an analyst specializing in digital workflow and technologies. Her e-mail address is htollvr@aol.com.

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