Olympics: Kodak Blog (employees vs users?)
Kodak have done something very simple and something that probably shouldn’t work. But it does. Find a popular event, take photos, photoblog explaining what you did and thereby demonstrating the product. Why ‘shouldn’t that work’? Well because, looking at top blogger lists, about the second most popular blog subject is photography and/or photoshop. (First is…
Kodak have done something very simple and something that probably shouldn’t work. But it does. Find a popular event, take photos, photoblog explaining what you did and thereby demonstrating the product. Why ‘shouldn’t that work’? Well because, looking at top blogger lists, about the second most popular blog subject is photography and/or photoshop. (First is – you guessed it – how to blog and make money from blogs). We have a surfeit of bloggers talking about taking bloomin’ pictures. Kodak has had to fight their way into the discussion.
Jenny Cisney is Kodak’s 1000 words blogger. She is at the Olympics, taking shots of every day scenes. 
Kind of a basic advertising premise. Advertise the product – in this case, cameras both still and video – talk about the product, show the product, explain the product, but mostly show what it can do, in a real way.
Jenny is roaming Beijing, finding nice everyday shots and give some tips:
Use your friend as a human tripod. Or would it be bipod? If you need to steady your camera to get a shot, use anything close by to brace it on. Even your friend.
…. cute no?
There’s another guy, Richard Mackson, who is some kind of famous photographer, blogging for them as well.
But remember, blogs – particularly when used in this way – are locked down content, a one-to-many social media channel. So for example, I didn’t find any Kodak-Fan generated content.
Our bloggers are either Kodak employees or former employees who loved participating in A Thousand Words so much that we have grandfathered their continued participation. They come from all across the company. There are many different disciplines represented across the world. We aim to post stories frequently on the main page. They will then be archived both by date and category.
Our readers are another big part of the blog. Please leave comments and we will try our best to respond back to you as soon as we can. We want to know what you think.
Comments are not content, they are discussion. Perhaps with the next Olympics, Kodak will have a UGC strategy?
For example, upload your photos to Flickr (or Kodak Gallery, Kodak’s branded photos sharing community site), tagged with Olympics12, and with an embed option so you can blog, or Facebook, photos from Kodak friendly fans.
And better still, pick out two or three Leaders (Brand Evangelists). They are the ones with hundreds of photos and videos, and thousands of friends on the site, and send them to London Olympics. For a few thousand dollars, you’ll get millions of social media impressions, from people who, when they blog or link or upload photos, connect via a ripple into many many social networks.
Cos, though Jenny and Richard are cute, and consumers love to connect to employees, chances are they aren’t the people who will win the hearts and minds of Kodak fans. Those people are already connecting and spreading the good oil on Kodak. You just have to find them.
For Julian Cole:
It was for internal use only …
EDIT:
Jenny got back to me:
Well, we do have a bunch of groups in Flickr where other people can add their photos… like Vintage Kodak Cameras (very popular), Kodak NASCAR pictures, etc.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/vintagekodakproducts/
and we favorite a lot of Kodak related videos on our YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/profile_favorites?user=KodakTube
I want to get more user generated content on Facebook and will be looking into that when we get back from Beijing.
Also check out our Kodak Picture of the Day which is usually user generated (just not during the Olympics)
http://www.kodak.com/go/potdand our Gallery of Kodak Moments from users
http://www.kodakgallery.com/galleryexposure/kodakmoment
So now there you go, not just using social media sites as broadcast advertising, but engaging with the members. Yay! 🙂
Tapping into the community that already exsists online is a better strategy then trying to start a new meme.
once again thanks for finding this gem! I cannot believe of all brands Kodak did this! Being a brand that is so slow to react!
@julian don’t be such a grump. We can’t ALL live in the future. 😛 *pinches Julian. I’ve added a video to the post for you to see. I think you’ll like it. 🙂
Laurel – Hi, I’m Jenny the blogger at Kodak that you mentioned. Thanks for the post about our blog. You have good suggestions, but we ARE already on Flickr and Facebook… I have been adding to them all during my time in Beijing. Check them out. http://www.flickr.com/photos/kodakpix/ and http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kodak/20385151754
We started them both just recently.
Oh and YouTube too!
http://www.youtube.com/user/KodakTube
Thanks Jenny! Are they integrated in anyway? I looked at the main 1000 words page and some subpages but the only ‘submissions’ I saw were for comments.
So for example, your Flickr page is Kodak content, no links to User Generated Content using Kodak cameras. Ditto YouTube channel.
In heritage media terms, this is using social media portals as corporate broadcast mediums, not social media ones. See what I mean?
Plus on Flickr they have ALL RIGHTS RESERVED instead of using Creative Commons (must attribute, non commercial etc). this means, I can’t legally blog your photos, which limits the amount of social media marketing I can do for you as a blogger.
The Facebook FANPAGE is a better use of community, but it’s not integrated into the 1000 words site is it?
Anyway, I still think you are doing great work, and have a nice style. 🙂
Well, we do have a bunch of groups in Flickr where other people can add their photos… like Vintage Kodak Cameras (very popular), Kodak NASCAR pictures, etc.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/vintagekodakproducts/
and we favorite a lot of Kodak related videos on our YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/profile_favorites?user=KodakTube
I want to get more user generated content on Facebook and will be looking into that when we get back from Beijing.
Also check out our Kodak Picture of the Day which is usually user generated (just not during the Olympics)
http://www.kodak.com/go/potd
and our Gallery of Kodak Moments from users
http://www.kodakgallery.com/galleryexposure/kodakmoment
Brilliant! You are a star! Exactly what I was looking for. I’ll update the blog post in a little while with the social media links. Thanks!
“Comments are not content, they are discussion.”
What?
So, the discussion we are having about Kodak here isn’t content of your blog? I generated it. I’m not the blogger here which makes me the user. Don’t you consider users comments and discussion as content contributing to your site?
Dave
Nope, comments are not Content, nor are links, nor are testimonials (status updates). Content is photos, videos, sound (podcast) or articles, or a mashup of those. Don’t confuse Content with Distribution (facebook ‘posted items’ or twitter tinyurls) or with Discussion (Twitter @someone or comments on a blog). The whole internet, contrary to popular belief is NOT content. It’s content, discussions and communication.
Otherwise picking a flower in a park or sniffing a bbq is ‘content’ and we don’t get anywhere by dumping everything that goes on in the world under the one category ‘content’. Think of media in terms of content, distribution and discussion and you’ll start to see very different emergent behaviours. 🙂
for non-media sites, think of it this way – is ebay a content site or a peer to peer commerce site? Is zopa or prosper a content site or a peer to peer banking site? See? Yet both have comments. Be discerning in the use of the word content, and other aspects start to reveal themselves…