Kodak and social media
(WORLD) The MediaSnackers podcast focusses on individuals, organisations or companies who are simply impressing us and which are crying out for more discussion.
Jeffrey Hayzlett is Chief Marketing Officer and Vice President of Kodak, discussing how they utilise social media in their operations.
0.00—0.32 intro
0.33—1.03 how does social media fit in with the marketing plans of Kodak
1.04—2.09 shift of approach from traditional to digital
2.10—3.03 benefits of narrowcast vs broadcast
3.04—4.29 social media killed B2B
4.30—6.45 internal use of social media
6.46—8.26 examples of results relating to social media use
8.27—9.03 outsourcing social media
9.04—10.03 future
10.04—10.16 outro
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TRANSCRIPTION
Jeffery Hayzlett: Hi, this is Jeffery Hayzlett, I’m the chief marketing officer for Eastman Kodak. I work with my marketers all around the world bringing smiles to everyone using Kodak.
DK: Brilliant. Well, it’s a pleasure to have you here Jeff. I’d like kick off with a question, which is a big question. How does social media fit in with the marketing plans for Kodak?
Jeffery Hayzlett:It’s a big part of what we do. I mean I happen to be one of the top 10 C level twitterers in the world so you could probably imagine I’m twittering all the time. I’m twittering about this interview, I’m twittering what we’ll talk about and then twitter to the folks that want to know more about what we’re doing. So it’s a big part of what we do. We in fact launch products using just twitter and other social media. So it’s a great way for us to interact with our customers, it removes all the filters that are normally out there for marketers and a good way to just be in touch with the community.
DK: Wow. So tell us a little bit about how you shifted your approach? Because I read recently, obviously Kodak as a company has shifted its approach in products in the last five, ten years. But also in terms of your marketing focus from traditional to digital. Could you give us a flavour of that?
Jeffery Hayzlett: Yeah, I mean our company used to be a film company primarily and it’s moved from that traditional base which in the wording of our business billions and billions and billions and billions of business dollars to less than a few hundred million dollars today in less than five years. But yet, we’re still a seven billion dollar company. So as we’ve had to migrate, we’ve migrated to more digital projects for most of our business. Now over 75% of our business is from digital. And with that, we’ve made that transformation. We’ve went from a broadcast market to a narrow cast market. And the best way to do that is through digital media and using the data that’s out there and putting together marketing campaigns whether their still on paper but you do so digitally or they’re done through email campaigns and web campaigns or through podcasts like we’re doing right now.
DK: So you talk about broadcasting to narrowcast. So what benefits have you seen with that shift?
Jeffery Hayzlett: Well, I think the biggest thing is just the recognition that people are people and they’re people, they’re not groups, they’re not mass amount of people you’re vomiting up information for them to digest. So look here’s a person, I care about you as a customer and as a customer, I want to know more about you and what you do and how you do it and here’s how I can better interact with you. And I think it removes a lot of the barriers that people have. I mean, all this stuff going on today with twitter and all these other things, I use twitter as an example because I just think it’s leveled the playing field, it puts people in direct contact with executives and with other people in the company. And they’re not just these big stuffy shirts anymore. They’re people out there just like anybody else, talking to real people. And it think that’s cool.
DK: So we wrote a blog post recently after a session with CEO groups around social media killed B2B. And I know you’ve traditionally been a B2B company and obviously a B2C company as well. So you have to juggle both, both camps, feeding both camps. Are there any differences now and do you see social media being an aide to that or a hindrance or a hurdle?
Jeffery Hayzlett: You know, I don’t think there’s different ways in terms of the marketing. I think there’s different ways to serve the product. I mean, you got a consumer product or you got a business to business product; those are different. But I think in the ways in which we market has now become more like you guys have talked about P2P, peer to peer and it’s more talking to people as individuals gets back to our last question which I think this what, twitter and a lot of these social media tools have done, they’ve put a personal space, a personal brand out there for people. And so you’re not just your company, you’re the person in the company. Our CEO likes to say when we first started pulling people together like 60% of the people at our company are new in the last four years; that’s a massive amount of turnover for a company. And people are asking, what is our culture? I am Kodak, you are Kodak, we are Kodak. And it’s made up of people. That’s our delivery and our brand and our promises to the people and I think that’s the big thing that this has done has made it more peer to peer as you’ve said in blog posts in the past.
DK: Wow, that’s amazing to think about 60% of the people are new to the company. So that kind of turns me onto another question about the internal use of social media. And I know just by being on twitter that you’re on twitter but I also see a couple of Kodak people from different departments on there. But that’s still kind of broadcasting out there. What’s the use of social media for you guys internally? Is there a strategy in place or is it literally, come on guys, just play have a go?
Jeffery Hayzlett: Yeah, we have a goal as well. And in terms of some scheming plans that we’ve developed over time. I mean, we have internally, we have the yellow pages. There’s a Facebook page where I have my picture, my information, my key contacts and then I also have my favorite movie, my favorite book, my favorite pictures on there which represents the different parts of our business. I mean, motion pictures, we do most of the motion pictures done with Kodak film and photo as well. Everyone thinks about Kodak moments, sometimes they’re my favorite photos so people could see who I am. And then I can post my favorite book there or books and then you get a sense of who that person is too because we’re, 40% of all commercially proven documents in the world are done by Kodak. So that’s a internal use.
And oh, by the way we also put our favorite quote up there because you get a flavour for who that person is too. If you don’t know that because, when you have 27,000 employees, you can’t know everybody, right? And so like for instance, my quote is from Shakespeare, “cry havoc and releasing the dogs of war.” So that kind of gives you kind of an idea that I’m out their fighting every day, I’m out there hunting everyday which is what a good marketing guy should do. So and then we use tools like Flickr and some other tools. But our yellow pages have been part of it. Kodak gallery, most all of the employees are on Kodak gallery, we share photos back and forth. And about 23rd of our employees are on Facebook and not quite as many on twitter but we’re in the hundreds on twitter, employees that are on twitter. So we get around, Kodak’s kind of a cool company.
DK: Oh, it sounds it man. Yeah, and I loved your quote. I can imagine people keeping their heads down after reading that a little bit when you come in the door with respect.
Jeffery Hayzlett: I’m about 6’3″ and a little bit too big.
DK: So tell us a little bit about any kind of examples, real tangible examples of your use, maybe personal use here or the companies use to like you say they’re interrelated use of social media that has helped you either communicate a message or even doing some kind of fighting the fires out there as well, some pretty critical elements of that.
Jeffery Hayzlett: There’s a couple of them. We launched the new Kodak Play Sport which was already a follow onto the Kodak Zx1; it’s a new waterproof camera. So we launched that camera utilizing and actually named it which is the new Kodak Play sport from twitter. But in addition to that, we can constantly get that feedback from customers. And I had somebody there in the UK recently write to me at Kodak UK on twitter and said, “Hey, take this printer and Jeffery Hayzlett and Kodak can shove it up your USB port.” So that was a direct quote, let me say that. But that was somebody who was having a problem and just wanted somebody to reach out. Well, I wrote him back and said, “Hey, look you could have just said, hello. We would have paid attention.” But this was great way for us to be able get some direct feedback and we turned the customer around and he was glad that he had a real person that he could talk to. And then addition to that, we just hear a lot more in terms of product features and functionalities that people give us suggestions on, I think it’s great. And it’s lead to us actually hiring a Kodak chief listener who’s out there on twitter and out there on the web watching and listening like an air traffic controller, trying to friend as many conversations about us as possible.
DK: That’s interesting. So, is your use of social media done through internal staff or you buying in services?
Jeffery Hayzlett: No, no, I don’t know how you could outsource this stuff. I mean, I guess you can. But I think to be more genuine, I want people to live it and breathe it and understand what’s that like every single day. So for us that’s important for people to do that and we like to have our people do it. That doesn’t mean that has to be their full time job. I mean, we have some people in Israel and other parts of the world where we just don’t have the base to do it full time but they do it as part of their job and it works out really well.
DK: Cool. So let me ask you to bring this podcast to a close a little bit about your future plans there. What’s on your books in essence, what have you got coming for Jeff but also for Kodak as well?
Jeffery Hayzlett: Well, I mean, I’m just busy as the dickens spreading the gospel of Kodak and making people smile because we just think it’s time to smile. And with that comes sharing and you’re going to see a lot more about sharing whether it’s sharing those Kodak moment because they’re not Kodak moments unless you share them. You capture them, that’s great. But they go to a digital shoebox like they’ve been going to those shoeboxes for years and stuck away in your closet and away for people can’t see them, then what good does it do? So we’ve added share buttons, we’ve added facial recognition and we’ve added one touch sharing where you can just hook it up and it goes to any of your accounts whether it’s Flickr and Facebook or the gallery and the frames that actually share pictures wirelessly. So those are the ways in which we want people to move forward and that’s what’s more in the future for Kodak.
DK: Brilliant. We’ll I’d just like to thank you for giving up your time to speak to MediaSnackers. Really appreciate it Jeff.
Jeffery Hayzlett: Well, we love the work that MediaSnackers do and keep making people making people smile.
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