Instagram $1bn, Kodak $??

It’s been an interesting few months in the world of photographic brands. Instagram has just been valued at $1billion while Eastman Kodak is facing bankruptcy.

Ironically for Kodak, photography in our hugely over-photographed society is on the up and not just through smart phones. On a recent trip to the British Museum CRICKET  lost count of the number of the new £500+ small format mirror-less cameras being toted around.

With the invention of roll film and the slogan ‘You press the button, we do the rest’, George Eastman made photography easy and widely accessible to the world.

 

In their 124 year history, the company and the brand grew to global domination, with the release of millions of cameras and accessories, photographic paper, ink, processing machines - bringing the world of memories to life with ‘Kodak moments’.

The once huge Eastman Kodak company is now worth a mere £75,996,383, 12 times less than Instagram and falling.


So what happened to the photo giant? With their vision to make photography simpler, more enjoyable, more accessible and ‘as convenient as the pencil’ and with an abundance of products to support it inside and outside the digital space, why did Kodak not continue to expand and change the way they brought photography to the world? The complete answer is understandably complex. From a brand perspective they were hampered by a strategy that leveraged their considerable patent legacy yet failed to truly unlock the power and potential of their biggest legacy of all – the Kodak brand. Strategically, they appeared blind to the significance of digital imaging at its outset, and they remained blinkered to the potential for social digital media.

It’s fascinating that a two year old app can effectively own the world’s modern take on photography. Integrated with the smartphone and the internet, and intuitively understanding how the world now shares, accesses, interprets and interacts with information, the founders of Instagram saw the future of personal and social photography and made their mark. Ironically, with a square Kodak 120 and Polaroid format!

There was no reason why Kodak couldn’t have been the logical provider of the Instagram experience – in fact it would have been a natural step for the owner of ‘moments’.

We wonder how long it will be before a generation of new consumers will ask – ‘What or who was a Kodak?’ – not knowing that the square shape was the very format of both Kodak 120 film and Polaroid SX70. Both pioneering photographic brands without which Instagram wouldn’t exist!

Listen up

Is listening becoming a lost art? Do we need to sit back, speak less and listen more? ‘It doesn’t cost anything to listen,’ says Richard Branson, suggesting executives get out there and really listen to what customers have to say. As billions of conversations take place across social networks, how can businesses and brands visually listen to the important ones – and filter out the noise?

In the latest edition of CRICKET Commentator, we’ve been looking at Active Listening – why it’s important for the individual and how it enables brands to build belonging and create advantage.

If you'd like to receive the latest CRICKET Commentator, drop a line to louise@cricket-ltd.com or click here. 



Stamp of Disapproval




Royal Mail announces 30% price increase

So DHL and the like charge about £2.50 to deliver an envelope Next Day to the other side of the country.

Imagine if a salesperson made the following pitch… ‘To get a letter next day to the other side of the country just drop it in one of our conveniently located drop boxes and a member of our trained team will deliver it by hand the next day to anywhere in the country’. How much? “60p a letter – regardless of whether it’s next door, the next town or 500 miles away.”

If this offer was from a new carrier I reckon you’d be mightily impressed – and probably wondering how they can do it for so little?

If the provider was the Royal Mail and the price of the service represents a 30% increase on what you are paying today, how do you feel?

In a Daily Telegraph poll yesterday 50% of respondents didn’t think the Royal Mail should be able to set their own prices due to their universal service obligation. In fact the overall mood was somewhere between outrage and an inevitable sense of betrayal.

So what could the Royal Mail do to stop the outrage of the British public?

It seems to us that the company has failed to successfully communicate what the Royal Mail brand is all about. Always resisting pouring the ‘gin’ of a private company into the ‘mother’s milk’ of the old state run institution that we all grew up with.

But branding, if it’s about nothing else, is about clarity.

This is who we are. This is what we do. This is why we do it. These are the values that make us different. Judge us – our products, services and pricing against these.

Huff and Puff

The new Guardian long form TV commercial
"Three Little Pigs" is currently running on Channel 4 … and on YouTube, the Guardian website, in cinemas and no doubt on a smartphone near you. It’s a worthy successor to "Points of View", the last campaign they ran way back in the late 1980s, and as with PoV it is an intelligent and ambitious piece of communication.

A couple of commentators have wondered what is its purpose, why the ad doesn’t have the obvious call to action that most media commercials have – “buy it tomorrow”, “collect the vouchers”, “special edition” etc. Clearly this is because it’s a brand ad – it’s reminding existing buyers why they buy the paper and non-readers why they should consider buying it.

In talking to what the publisher calls the paper’s operating system "open journalism", it sketches out a much bigger point – not just the style of journalism it holds dear but a new agenda of interaction with readers, other journalists, bloggers, tweeters. The idea that it doesn’t just want to passively engage you as a reader but to actively engage and involve you in what is happening in the world. Suggesting that you have a role to play – perhaps even a responsibility to engage and have your say.

What surprises us most is the irony of using that most traditional of media – the TV commercial – to kick off the debate that news is different in the age of social media.

The Geneva Jaguar Land Rover Brand Briefing

Earlier this month, 

CRICKET was tasked with communicating to the global media the ambition of the Jaguar Land Rover brands - visually and experientially - for a pre auto show Media Brand Briefing

In the grounds of the historic Chateau du Parc des Eaux-Vives, CRICKET designed and constructed a 4,200 square feet Jaguar Land Rover structured environment. The hour long presentation, using multi-screen technology, communicated the JLR business, the global infrastructure and ended with detailed insight into the two iconic brands of Jaguar and Land Rover by the respective Global Brand Directors. The presentations were a combination of video, complex graphics and stunning imagery to bring the key messages to life.

The evening, attended by 170 global media and 8 of the JLR board of directors, ended with dinner in the Chateau, which was the original venue for the world premiere of the iconic E-type Jaguar in 1962. 

The Geneva press party

A post Geneva press day party was held at The Little Buddha Bar in downtown Geneva, where CRICKET transformed the venue, with live music and a DJ within a world theme, for informal conversations between journalists and JLR executives.

Theatre of Brand

Online, on-street, or in-mall, retail is facing tough challenges. Brands have to deliver on three dimensions of the retail experience - Choice, Behaviour and Content - to win customer allegiance.  In this month's CRICKET Commentator, our regular thought piece, we've been exploring how the landscape has changed. We believe brands have to be multisensory, not just multichannel, to gain ground with consumers and staff - as well as having a clear idea of what they stand for and who they want to talk to. To read the full Commentator piece, please email louise@cricket-ltd.com and click here.

Journey of Discovery

CRICKET's Kellie & Paul at the RGS

To celebrate the 1 millionth Land Rover Discovery, CRICKET were commissioned to transform the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington into an informal celebration dinner attended by the ‘who’s who’ of adventurers and adventurous people, from Sir Ranulph Fiennes, to Bear Grylls and Zara Phillips to Donald McIntyre. The evening (video) was also a send-off dinner for the Discovery trek which is a 10,000 Km trek to Beijing, with the ambition of raising 1 million pounds for the International Federation of Red Cross. CRICKET’s role was to transform the RGS, including displaying and lighting the iconic vehicles, with key after dinner presentations from the Land Rover Global Brand Extension Director, Mark Cameron, and Bear Grylls.For donations see http://www.ammado.com/community/125893.