Score 3 for Kodak VARs!

Kodak Customers Earn Top Honors at PODi Best Practices Awards - Printing Industry News from WhatTheyThink: "ROCHESTER, N.Y., -- Kodak customers captured top honors in the Digital Printing Initiative (PODi) 2009 Best Practices Awards. These customers used KODAK Solutions with Variable Data Printing (VDP) capabilities to enhance their digitally printed marketing materials."

Nice, but...what I can't figure out is aside from some bragging rights how does this help Kodak? Given that the evangelist stage of digital is coming to an end, it is the VARs who produced the products that created the value. Recently there was a story about some outfit that replaced two igens with some Canon boxes. I wouldn't be surprised if they got some awards with the igens.

But, my bet is that any OPM or VAR will replace anything if the cost of change is less than the perfect fit to their specific market.

In the old days, when the job was to "educate" this made alot of sense. But the game has changed to block and tackle Any OPM that is going to get "educated" is already educated. The problem and the opportunity is the educated consumer. They will use their networks, both web and personal, to compare and contrast.

Everyone now knows the digital dog can dance. But can he do the cha-cha, samba or mambo? And exactly what kind of music is playing for addressable customers?