Berens: Northwestern University's Don E. Schultz, the father of integrated marketing communications, has said many times that marketers are great at talking but bad at listening. A key part of the chief blogger's role seems to be to listen, but can the blogger herself or himself be heard internally when there's something important to communicate? What have you, the CBDO, had to change in order to enable this?
Hayzlett: I'm proud to say that Kodak's first chief blogger is a woman, Jenny Cisney, one of the first female Fortune 500 Chief Bloggers. Jenny has such extensive experience -- both personal, with her "ljc" blog, and professional, as one of our several original bloggers on Kodak's 1000Words -- that she was the perfect choice for the role.
But her experience in the blogosphere wasn't the only reason I picked her. She is also respected by her peers internally and recognized as an influencer in the online space. So people internally also listen to Jenny. In fact, she does a lot of speaking at blogging and social media conferences about the morale-boosting power Kodak's blogs have had.
My role is basically to clear the weeds. I want to make sure I get obstacles out of the way of my teams, from business development to communications and public affairs, all the way to Tom and Jenny.
Berens: This graph from the 2007 report from the Center for the Digital Future out of the USC Annenberg School for Communication shows that photosharing has increased as an online behavior nearly 400 percent in just four years:
Earlier, you mentioned new Kodak employees and revenue for a digital age. What is your company doing to facilitate and capitalize on the new online hunger for photosharing? I know the company purchased Ofoto a while back and turned it into Kodak Gallery with your EasyShare software, but how is the company positioning itself with regard to Flickr and other photosharing sites and technologies?
Hayzlett: The reality is, with our 70 million members in Kodak Gallery, we're the second-largest social network online, next to MySpace. The Kodak brand still means quality, reliability and trust, especially when it comes to people's pictures. People trust their memories to Kodak, whether they're getting a print made at their local photofinisher, or more likely today, storing and sharing their photos online and making photo books to celebrate their stories.
In addition, we continue to make photo sharing easy. Our Kodak EasyShare software got people taking and sharing more digital pictures than ever before. And we constantly look for new ways to make sharing easy -- the Gallery recently announced a partnership with Slide, for instance, which allows our members to showcase their Gallery photos on all social networking sites using their portable Slideshow product.
Globally, there are about 550 million digital pictures taken every day. Kodak is the only company positioned like we are, n audience and nearly having a stroke on stage -- was an inspirational internal video at Kodak that the company later decided to release on the down-low about a year or so ago. Is that true? What's the brand story behind this terrific video?
Hayzlett: The video you're referring to was originally created for Walt Mossberg's "All Things Digital" conference in 2006. We used it as an introduction for our CEO, before his on-stage interview. We received such a favorable response, we realized we were onto something. Just when you think Kodak is taking itself too seriously, we show you that we get it --- with a tongue-in-cheek nod to our roots.
The team brought it back and shared it with our employees, and from there, it leaked onto the internet. Once it hit, we received remarkable response -- CBS Sunday Morning used it as an example of how Kodak is changing its image to meet a new reality. It proves that, echoing another famous tagline, "We're not your father's Kodak."
Note: you can download a podcast of Jeffrey Hayzlett's ad:tech keynote address here.
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Brad Berens is chief content officer and editor at large for iMedia and ad:tech.
