The Mouse that Roared: Kodak’s Printer Campaign

A little over a year ago, I heard the CMO of Kodak, Jeffrey Hayzlett, speak at a conference. He is a great speaker, with an even greater story to tell. I went back to work and called one of my tech clients and said, “watch out–Kodak is going to come after you in a big way!”

Remember Kodak? They used to be known for cameras and film, and were basically given up for dead not too long ago. Well, they have reinvented what a “picture” is all about.

Then I forgot about it until last night. I confess, I was watching Dancing with the Stars when I realized the the printer division of Kodak had broken a new campaign. And this morning, a Kodak printer ad was on the back page of The New York Times. Themed “Print and Prosper”, it goes after the printer industry’s jugular: the fact that although printer prices are low, the cost of ink cartridges can choke a horse.  

 

Print and Prosper Campaign

Pretty direct, isn’t it? (I believe the agency is Deutsch.)

What I like about this is that Kodak’s marketing team has adopted a totally classic challenger brand positioning. So many companies are too timid to really go for it in the way the Kodak has. Being a challenger brand requires that you take off the kid gloves. So what exactly is Kodak challenging here?

Just like a narcotics pusher, printer companies currently offer (nearly) free samples (i.e., printers) in order to hook you on their ink cartridges, which can be very very pricey. Kodak directly assaults this way of doing business by saying that Kodak charges a fair price for printers AND ink cartridges. Kodak is bucking the widely held belief among printer manufacturers that most printer profit margins are virtually non-existent, and the only way to make money is on the ink. They are actually charging more than average for their printers, while promising a much lower lifetime cost for ink.

In so doing, Kodak is tapping into the consumer demand for transparency. Consumers know that printers from HP, Canon, Lexmark, et.al, are sold at an artificially low price in order to hold them hostage for the ink. The list of offerings is also very simple. Kodak sells 7 printers, and 3 types of ink cartridges. HP has 7 sub-branded printer categories (DeskJet, PhotoSmart, etc.)  and 100!!!! separate models that are suitable for home or small business use. I tried to count how many kinds of ink cartridges they sold, but I gave up at 160. Does the world really need that many kinds of printers and accessories? To be fair, a great deal of the ink cartridges may be for specialty graphics arts related printers, but really!

So Bravo to Kodak for looking at the business in a different way. There is always a risk in trying to claim “low price”. They could set off a pricing war in the inks category. They could also provide permission for the larger competitors to raise the cost of printers. Either reaction might push Kodak back into an “also-ran” position. 

I’ll be interested to see what’s next.

What’s in a name? For AIG, waaaay too much.

Just when I thought I had seen it all, I read that AIG has actually removed its name from its headquarters building on Wall Street. I have been wracking my brain for the last 24 hours, trying to think of anything that compares. I can’t.

There doesn’t seem to be a precedent. Certainly not to the extent of buses filled with indignant and self-righteous citizens who peer at the A.I.G executive homes in the estate sections of Fairfield, Westport and the like. It doesn’t matter that 99% of the fury is misplaced and directed at the stoic survivors who still work there and who had no part in the massive trading losses.

All that seems to matter is that AIG clearly believes that its name, which was on the equivalent of life support, must be expunged from the public consciousness. They have hired Lippincott to come up with a fresh name. That is one tough assignment.

Think back to other corporate scandals. Enron drew universal hatred and scorn, too, but it went out of business and its name and award winning logo went with it. Barings, another financial concern pulled down by a rogue trader, was sold, then cut up and resold in little pieces. (Baring Asset Management still exists, as a subsidiary of MassMutual, but that’s all that is left.) Drexel Burnham Lambert hung on for a while, post-Milken, but also died. WorldCom, luckily, had a former corporate name–MCI–in its hip pocket. But when it rebranded, it had a lot of baggage to overcome:

The company’s switch to the MCI name in its advertising and promotion that there is no mention whatsoever of WorldCom. Normally, a “new and improved” campaign makes at least passing mention to the company’s former identity.

In this case, WorldCom’s excesses are seen as so excessive that the company disdains even the slightest mention. “It’s a cancer,” one executive said.

Sounds suspiciously like what senior executives about AIG must be saying about their own identity. It must be a truly miserable place to be right now, as was made clear in the Op-Ed letter in today’s New York Times, Dear A.I.G., I Quit!

As I have said before, naming should not be undertaken lightly. In this case, I agree with management’s decision. It would be interesting to know what is their budget for re-branding, though.

At the end of the day, I hope that “NewCo” spends even more to inspire their people and reassure them of the rectitude and viability of the company. They deserve it.

Stranger than Science Fiction: SyFy

Ah, blogging. I read the story of the rebranding of the Sci Fi channel to a new name and identity, “SyFy”, a week ago. My immediate reaction was to write something blistering. Then I thought about it. Then I read that many others had gotten in front of me with blistering comments. On one site, I saw more than 1000 negative comments about the new name.

First, let’s see the old identity:

Yeah, I can see why they wanted a change. And now, the new one:

 

New logo and tagline

The official story is that “Sci Fi” as a name is in the public domain, and cannot be trademarked. The back story is that this is a channel that has been limping along for years, with spotty programing and so-so viewership.

My immediate reaction was that this solution was a cop out. Why spend money and energy to create a bogus spelling and new logo and use the change as an excuse to get attention? “SyFy” isn’t an obvious pronunciation (many viewers observe that it is closer to a venereal disease than a cable channel), and changing the spelling doesn’t necessarily equate with new or different programing. Plus, nobody likes new names. It’s human nature to resist change. 

The good news?  This is a gorgeous, modern wordmark. I love it. The bad news? The dreadful, derivative, vague tagline (how can Sci Fi not be totally aware of the new, and better, Comcast tagline, “Dream Big”?), and the confusing messaging. I mean, really, how seriously can you take a statement like this: 

“Imagine Greater” will become the new brand message and tagline, inviting both consumers and advertisers into a new era of unlimited imagination, exceptional experiences and greater entertainment.

Why does everyone think they need a tagline these days? Probably because their overall identity and positioning doesn’t do the job. So everything seems to hang on the slender framework of a tagline. And worse, marketers want to lock-up the tagline to the logo. 

Here is the truth. Sci Fi did not change its logo and create the tagline for its viewers. Sci Fi broke the story during its up front, which is all about wooing agencies. The real audience here is the media community. These are the people who buy the advertising time. Sci Fi was (and still is) known as having a mostly male, mostly geeky audience. Not the coolest demographic. The channel was described recently as “campy and unambitious” in a New York Times article about the last episode of Battlestar Galactica. It doesn’t take much these days to be jettisoned from a media plan, and perceptions like these don’t help.

What bothers me is that the strategy seems to be at odds with the reality, or at least the messaging. Instead of a crisp summary of how the network has evolved, we are forced to read fluff like: 

Syfy more clearly captures the mainstream appeal of the world’s biggest entertainment category, and reflects the network’s ongoing strategy to create programming that’s more accessible and relatable to new audiences. Syfy will continue to celebrate the traditional roots of the genre, while opening the brand to accommodate a broader range of imagination-based entertainment.

This is not what I call a reason to believe. No brand can hang itself on a statement like that!

My overall grade? Strategy: C+  Logo: A  Tagline: F

Is Corporate Identity Still Relevant?

Do you remember corporate identity? I mean when there was this thing called corporate identity that was totally separate from a design firm, an ad agency, a pr firm? And there wasn’t such a thing as a “branding agency”?

There was foundational and epic work by Paul Rand, and others who followed behind–Lippincott & Margulies, Landor. These designers envisioned logos that would live for generations, cast in concrete, metal, adorning glossy brochures. They took as much time as they needed to explore alternative designs; after all, these logos were going to live for 20, 30 years or more. And just as advertising was still the purview of the CEO, so was corporate identity. These were the days before Wall Street absorbed the CEO’s full attention.

And then there were the systems. Beautiful three-ring binders filled with stories about the company and how the logo evolved. And cryptic guidelines that were written for those rare individuals who understood pica, font, CMYK. This knowledge was closely guarded, usually by the head of corporate communications. (These were the days before CMO’s) The binder was distributed on a need to know basis.

Stationery was important then, and forms, because they were produced in quantity and lasted a long time. Corporations with a strong corporate identity were distinctive. They stood out from the crowd with a certain elegance superior to companies with mismatched marketing material.

In a world that was dominated by the command and control management style, and at a time when advertising told consumers what they should want and why they should buy (no questions asked) the whole corporate identity thing worked very well.

Enough reminiscing. It’s a whole new world today. And I think the old world is still colliding with the new one, in an unhealthy way. Companies don’t have 10 year strategic plans anymore, but they often have identity systems that are 10 years old. If print was the dominant medium when your corporate identity was created, then it’s probably outdated. Visual systems today need the potential for movement, animation, deconstruction. Logos must work as tiny bugs next to a URL more often than they are seen on stationery.

And today, employees and consumers have a personal stake in how a brand (including the logo) lives and communicates in the world. This is not easy to reconcile. Some companies maintain an “enforcer” approach, others throw up their hands and completely let go. I think there is a better way. More about this later.

True Transparency: Recovery.gov

Have you seen it? The US government has launched a new website dedicated solely to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Well, the American people asked for more transparency, and they have got it. To quote the home page, “This is your money. You have a right to know where it is going and how it is being spent.” 

I am tempted to make a snarky comment about the past administration here, but this is a blog about branding, not politics.

Barack Obama does indeed reflect a 21st century sensibility, and it goes beyond his passion for his Blackberry. What he has done is to reinforce his brand promise of government transparency in a tangible way, using communication methods that are open, clear and easily accessible. There is opportunity for the public to both learn and engage. In the style of classic cascading communications, many government agencies have also set aside a section or page on their own websites dedicated to the Recovery Act. Not only that, his team has created a logo that will be deployed on other agency websites and literal sites (such as highway construction, I guess) where our ARRA tax dollars are at work. 

Washington is littered with logos, of course. The majority are dedicated to Departments and Agencies. (I just took a quick tour of a dozen or so, and it’s a very interesting visual exercise.) It’s unusual for legislation to be identified this way. In this regard President Obama seems to be following in the steps of the Roosevelt administration; the WPA had its own logo, too. But if you think of the impact of the Recovery.gov logo in terms of reach and frequency, it has the potential to really become top of mind to the American public in a positive way.

This is pretty classic brand-building. It remains to be seen whether the program has “legs”, whether people engage, whether communications are timely and correct. But it’s a good start.