The CMO of Kodak has credited social media with helping the company to realign itself as a primarily B2B company and revive its financial fortunes.
CMO Jeff Hayzlett said that Kodak is hiring a âchief listener’ to keep track of social media comments referencing the brand.
In 1999 Kodak had photographic film sales of $5bn, falling to $200m by 2008. In the same period 18 out of 21 of its senior executives had left the company.
Engaging with channel partners is also a priority for Kodak said Hayzlett, “We spend a lot of time with our channel partners. Everything that we make internally for all of our videos, training videos, goes to all of our partners.”
Hayzlett himself has over 11,000 Twitter followers. “I’m directly talking to photographers, commercial printers, our customers and it’s a way for me to interact directly without filters and without someone else telling me what they said or how they said it.”
He added that creating the post of chief listener would allow Kodak to develop a system, “to manage social media and then from a whole company perspective to hear customer complaints and get them routed to customer service, to hear customer suggestions about products, to say, “If you did this, I’d buy it.”
Hayzlett said that despite 70 per cent of the company’s revenues coming from its B2B division, its B2C side receives the most marketing attention.
Hayzlett was speaking to Meet the Boss TV.
