Jeff Hayzlett, former CMO of Kodak, keynoted at MLC’s opening executive retreat last week. Arriving in his signature cowboy boots, Jeff shared his fittingly defiant approach to leadership in the “Wild West” of social media. He also shared insights from his new book, “The Mirror Test”.
Adversarial Leadership
Jeff opened by saying:“my job as CMO is to create tension,” and explained how he challenged the status quo and broke the rules to get action on social media at Kodak. He once asked Legal how many people he would have to annoy before he got fired. When they said a third of the company, he decided he still had plenty of leeway to push his plans through. Similarly, when we asked how to deal with Legal’s approval processes for social media, he answered “You’re in marketing, be creative.”
He Who Dares…
One good example of Jeff putting his neck out, was the naming contest for Kodak’s waterproof camera (originally the “Zx3”). After reading an article criticizing Kodak’s unoriginal product names, Jeff decided to launch a contest for the best name and put the winners’ picture on the box. The problem was, they had just one week to choose the name. When slow Legal procedures threatened to thwart the contest, Jeff decided to ignore protocol and risk an unknown fine. The contest was tweeted just 26 hours after the article came out and generated more than 28,000 names in 4 days. “PlaySport” was chosen – an amalgamation of two entries. The contest saved Kodak $250,000 on nomenclature and created so much buzz that Marketing didn’t need to buy a single piece of advertising for 6 months. This is what Jeff calls “OPM”: Other People’s Money. And the fine from Legal? $300.
As well as sharing leadership techniques, Jeff also gave some useful color around Kodak’s social media team, processes, and strategy.
Kodak’s Social Media Team
Kodak has 14 full-time digital staff (who cover Web and SEO as well as social media), including a Chief Blogger and a Chief Listener. In addition, it has a network of part-time bloggers and twitterers who come from all parts of the company, e.g., Sales in China, Finance in India, or HR in France.
Kodak’s Social Media Coordination
Kodak has five standardized “step and repeat” plans for coordinating social media activity around new content. The plans specify exactly what the Chief Blogger, Chief Listener, and Twitterers should do in different circumstances and vary in intensity (e.g., Plan A= one message in channel X; Plan E= multiple messages in channels X, Y, and Z.).
“The 4 Es of Social Media”
Four core principles drive Kodak’s social media strategy:
- Engage: Reach people on a one-to-one basis. Kodak hired a Chief Listener to act as “air traffic control” and route comments to Sales/NPD/Customer Services for reply. She uses Radian6 and PeopleBrowsr to watch trends and identify comments that need a response.
- Educate: Listen and learn. When customers said Kodak’s new camera needed a microphone jack, Kodak listened and passed the message onto NPD. The modified camera outsold its competitor 10 to 1.
- Excite: Show customers that their input makes a difference. Kodak’s contest to name the Zx3 drummed up a lot of excitement.
- Evangelize: Excitement leads to advocacy. As Jeff explained, when you get people in the same direction, you don’t need control.
Finally, a few of my favorite soundbites:
On ROI
“When someone asks ‘What’s the ROI?’ ask back, ‘What’s the Return on Ignoring?’”
On risk:
“You never had control of the message. Customers always controlled the brand because they got (or didn’t get) the promise delivered. You have to give something up (control) to get something back.”
On Legal:
“Legal are there to advise, not make decisions. They don’t monitor every call or email, so why every social media interaction?”
On viral videos:
“Quit wasting your time – you can’t do it.” Marketers tend to see viral videos as a home run, but social media is a game of building hearts and minds, not eyeballs and ears. Richer conversations have a bigger long-term pay-off.
On the future of Websites:
“They will become a hub.” Jeff uses a tool called Socialize Your Stuff to aggregate positive comments on his brands/products from across the Web on his site.
MLC members, learn more about the CMO’s role in social media at our 2010 meeting series, “Closing the CMO Leadership Deficit in Social Media.” Register here. Or, attend the webinar on July 14 with your team, where we’ll share some of the highlights from the research. Webinar registration here.
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