By Brittany Hutson
By now, you’re probably familiar with seven 15- second commercials which feature either Trey Songz, Pitbull, Drake or Rihanna out and about living the glamorous life of a young, hip celebrity in the studio, at a fashion show, on the tour bus or in their posh apartments. While we’re used to seeing these artists and their jet-setting lifestyles on a continual basis, we’re not used to seeing them featured to promote a century old brand. These artists are part of Kodak’s new M5 90 EASYSHARE digital camera campaign. The whole point of these commercials is to highlight the exclusive Share Button feature of these new cameras.
From a marketing standpoint, Kodak is typically known as the camera that young mothers use to capture warm and fuzzy moments of their children and share them online to other family members. But now the company is taking a whole new direction with these stylish and edgy ads to target younger and trendier consumers, which happen to be the most active demographic when it comes to sharing images digitally through social networking.
Tiffany Bradshaw, a marketing brand strategist based in Los Angeles, gives Kodak a thumbs up for recognizing the importance of attracting a demographic that is different from what Kodak traditionally goes after. “I think it’s smart that Kodak wants to tap into this market. It appears to be an attempt to make these consumers brand loyal,” she said.
There is no doubt that the company badly needed this image revival. In 2005, Kodak was the third-biggest seller of digital cameras globally, according to market-research firm IDC. By 2009, Kodak had fallen to the number five spot, the lowest it’s been since IDC began tracking Kodak’s sales in 2001. Though Kodak sold 11.2 million digital cameras in 2009, it was a 19 percent decline from the prior year, according to IDC.
Research compiled by the Wisconsin School of Business also recognized Kodak’s slight drop in popularity among consumers. In their Kodak Fall 2009 Integrated Company Analysis, it stated that Kodak “seeks to connect with the consumer at an emotional level and encourage them to smile and make others smile—all while capturing and sharing their newfound happy moments with Kodak products. However, the company fails to deliver a clear and differentiating promise that resonates with a meaningful number of consumers.”
But more than that, the researchers acknowledged how vital social media would be to Kodak’s marketing efforts. The analysis noted that the number of Kodak followers was lower compared to that of their competitors, Canon and Nikon. “Kodak cannot afford to lose in the digital space as social media has the powerful effect of creating communities of ever-growing fans who evangelize the brand…”
By 2010, Kodak created a product to be more competitive in the social networking arena. The EASYSHARE, described as the world’s thinnest 5X optical zoom digital camera, allows consumers to simultaneously share their pictures to multiple social networking communities such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and the Kodak Gallery. With the product in hand, the next order of business was to put together a marketing campaign that would embody the excitement around it.
