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Kodak is bankrupt.  Chances are hearing that news made you sad.  As Don Draper said in a Mad Men episode where he was pitching to Kodak—showing slides of his estranged wife and children as he spoke—“Nostalgia is a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone.”   Marketing guru Al Ries has a take on what went wrong. He says that it’s not that Kodak missed the shift to digital photography: Kodak not only invented digital photography, they invested over $5billion in digital photography research and development and hold thousands of patents.   Rather, he argues, it’s a branding issue. He suggests that in consumers’ minds the Kodak brand is associated with photographic film. Pointing to various other Kodak technologies that never really succeeded—from photocopiers to printers—he says that having a well-known name is not always an advantage. He says Kodak should have created a new brand name for their digital technology, as Eveready did with the Energizer brand for the new alkaline batteries.   Maybe he’s right.  Or maybe he’s just a marketing guy with a hammer, looking for a nail. Perhaps Lou Gerstner’s experience is more relevant…”I came to see, in my time at IBM, that [...] Read More »

  Eli will tell you the first time he came across it. They were doing the New York Times crossword, which they do every morning, and the clue was ‘encircled’. Four letters. And after that it became a bit of joke between them: could they use it on a client job and get away with it? Eli and Ruth Cohen operate from a small office on West 28th Street, just a short cab ride from the United Nations headquarters. They are the go-to firm for national anthems. Visit them, and you’re reminded of Allan and Margaret Hubbard at South Canterbury Finance… a gentle, elderly couple, working away together. There are files piled high on every surface.  “Girt by files,” Ruth murmurs, before moving to the piano for a quick reprise of ‘Advance Australia Fair’. They’ve done most of them. Well not Palestine’s, obviously. And they missed out on France (“Allons enfants… marchons, marchons”) because tunes, they concede, are not really a strong point. Their son, Nathan, he was good with tunes, but he left the firm at an early age because of tension over his friendship with Freddie Mercury. Nevertheless, they are proud of Nathan’s contribution to Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ [...] Read More »

  I never yet saw a company that was successful because of what it saved. Or—rather more provocatively—if the accountants are running the place, the receivers can’t be far behind. The RSA has been in the news because their national office figured they could save some money by having the poppies for the annual appeal made in China.  The cost reduction was material, so you can’t knock the initiative. What bothered me, however, was, ”is that it?”     When they got together (as I assume they did) to plan Anzac Day 2011, did they have anyone in the room other than the cost accountants? Didn’t anybody say, “Listen guys, that’s valuable work, thanks. Now let’s get back to our fundamental purpose here. You  know, the bit about, ‘at the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.’ Where are we up to with that?”        I hear Maori Television has Judy Bailey back, which rather makes the point how much of a formulaic ritual Anzac Day has become. Instead of more of the same, how about asking [insert the name of your favourite agency or consultancy] what might be more effective? In Hastings, for example, (and maybe elsewhere) someone’s had the bright idea of hanging banners on the lamposts, like you’d normally see for a major event. There’s a picture of a poppy and [...] Read More »