Kodak Before Instagram with Jeffrey Hayzlett

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What’s the B2B B2C difference, how does an industrial giant like Kodak switch from consumer to business marketing and use tension to motivate net marketing strategies?  

What type of business to business research is required and what is the future of marketing to business customers?

These are just some the questions we address in this episode. Kodak, once a huge consumer brand, has transformed itself from a business-to-consumer to a business-to-business focused company.

Over the last five years, Kodak’s revenue from consumer film has dropped from $15 billion to $200 million, but the company still has sales of $8 billion annually through a portfolio of new products, most of which are less than two years old and 80 percent of that revenue comes from business customers. This is the story of reinvention.  

It’s about how an old guard stalwart picked itself up after the demise of Kodachrome, one of the world’s most iconic brands, and emerged from the rubble, staring obsolescence in the face.

Rather than go the way of the buggy whip, Kodak shifted its focus and beat the odds.  

Learn how former Kodak CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett helped an analog titan become a digital powerhouse in this exclusive one-on-one audio interview.

Named Business to Business Marketer of the Year by B2B Magazine in 2009, Jeffrey Hayzlett is the author of “The Mirror Test: Is Your Business Really Breathing?” and a keynote speaker at the PRSA International Conference in DC.

SHOW NOTES

01:01– Jeffrey Hayzlett’s upcoming keynote presentation at the PRSA  International Conference in DC will include a discussion of how big and small business marketers are adapting to the digital world, communicating more effectively on a one-on-one basis with their customers and marketing strategies for a recession economy.

01:37 —  The importance of asking yourself the tough questions and the failure of many business marketers to do just that when in fact, that’s exactly what they should be doing.

02:24 — The use of tension inside Kodak to re-energize the company, instigating change from the center and convincing the business customers that Kodak’s best days are yet to come.

04:09 — The death of the consumer film business and Kodak’s efforts to reinvent its brand through new business-to-business products and services.

06:11– Kodak’s leadership position in commercial ink jet product, its consumer ink jet technology which is experiencing triple digit annual growth and it’s new online photo sharing platform Kodak Gallery which is geared to take the world by storm, Hazylett says.

07:28 —  HP made $9 million in net profits last year just from ink jet cartridges, demonstrating that consumers are paying too much for printer cartridges and representing a market opportunity for Kodak in their B2C products business.

07:55 — Marketing to the 30 to 48 year old female demographic in the US, which purchases 97% of Kodak’s consumer products.

09:02– The death of Kodachrome after 76-years and how supply and demand will impact the availability of photographic film in the future.

12:33 —  Film vs. Digital Movies.  The impact of digital imaging on the motion picture business and whether or not the future of filmmaking and motion picture distribution is digital technology.

14:43 — The issue of archivability and how and why digital images erode over time.

15:46 — Todd Van Hoosear, who blogs about social media and the evolution of marketing and business at “More than Marketing,” asks where the next marketing war will be fought.  The answer is mobile.  Jeffrey discusses the future of mobile marketing, apps, trust and maintaining one-to-one, personable relationships.

18:14 —  The two biggest misconceptions business marketers have about assimilating social media into their existing marketing and communications apparatus: profitability and measurability.

19:44 — Eighty percent of Kodak’s business today is B2B and B2B social media communications are different than B2C communications.  Kodak released a B2B social marketing guide to help its customers promote the successes of their customers.

20:14 — End

Photo by Waldemar Brandt on Unsplash