He was ever the wild card, his four-year brief to 'cause tension' at a time when the staid company was facing its greatest crisis. Now Eastman Kodak and chief marketing officer and graphic communications group vice president Jeff Hayzlett are together no more, the latter leaving at the end of May “to pursue personal projects”.
He's stirred the pot while Kodak reinvented itself, shedding a reported 85 per cent of its workforce in the process, and with the job largely done, the familiar euphemism means it's time to go.
But not without a last hurrah… and Hayzlett was on form at mediaXchange last month. The opportunity provided by the NAA conference saw a packed hall and the adulation of those forming a long queue to have him autograph his book, 'The Mirror Test: Is Your Business Really Breathing'.
The 'highly visible' star of CNBC and 'Celebrity Apprentice', he's the boy from South Dakota who made good… South Dakota, “where this crowd would be the seventh-largest city,” he told NAA delegates.
And yes, Kodak's certainly breathing, with two thirds of its revenue flowing from ten digital products, more than half of which didn't exist five years ago; almost two thirds of its people recruited in that period.
Most companies “would not survive that sort of transformation”, but the message is that transformation can happen, and what Kodak did, “you can do”.
And he says, “people saying newspapers are dead… reminds me of Wang in 1980, anticipating the paperless society.
“Now we have a Wang-less society,” he says.
The pitch: Hayzlett had his chief executive announce the 'tension' role on video, and then emailed it around the company: “My job was to take you to the edge of the table, almost fall off, but before that happens someone should grab me.
“Tension causes healthy debate, and with healthy debate comes great things,” he says.
The problem: Six years ago, Kodak's revenue from film-based products was US$15 billion; today it's less than $200 million (in a company with $10 billion revenue, a third of which now comes from Asia).
The pay-off: Now 40 per cent of all commercially printed documents are touched by Kodak technology. “We weren't in that business five years ago,” he says, “ and had no number one in market share.”
The picture-sharing portal Kodak Gallery now has 75 million members - making it the third largest social network in the world - and more high-resolution photos (five billion of them) than “all the others combined”.
Digital revenue is “growing in double-digits” with inkjet at 100 per cent against HP, the rival he calls 'Big Ink' for a print-cartridge product he calculates as more expensive than oil, vodka, champagne and penicillin combined - “$422,000 if you had to fill you car's tank with it”.
The process: With not a little understaement, he confides dark moments clouded the transition from a consumer model to a predominantly (70 per cent) business-to-business one. “We had to think about who we are and who we want to be,” he says.
Who we are? He's candid about chatting up a young woman on one of many flights; feigning interest as she told him about herself and what she did; waiting to land what he thought was the jaw-dropper to her return question.
'What do you do? … I'm CMO of Eastman Kodak …and she said 'Who's that?'
Humbled but undeterred Hayzlett says, “we knew what we had was good, just like what you do is.”
Material science and imaging science is at the core of it: Three-quarters of the world's camera makers use technology from the company, which has 25,000 patents in its store: “They send us a cheque.
“It's so cold in Rochester we've got nothing else to do but invent things.”
But Hayzlett warms up to the campaign challenge, keen that staid Kodak doesn't take itself too seriously… and with an April 1 'aromatography' joke which helps ensure that.
The look and feel had to change, with a return to emphasising traditional values - such as being 'trustworthy, reliable, caring and human' - starting to act differently and “put stakes into the ground.
“You can't look cool and dress like Elmer Fudd,” he says.
“A brand is nothing but a promise to deliver.”
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Hayzlett tells how he baulked plans for the DRUPA 2008 Stream inkjet launch: “$4 million-worth and it looked like a big grey box (think Elmer Fudd)… offset-class quality and speed, it would change everything, and they brought me a big grey box that looked as if it had been designed by Soviet shotputters.
“I said we're not announcing this box, it should look like a Maserati, with fire coming out of its ass. It needs to look really cool, and I want it redesigned. They came back with something which looked like 'Czechoslovania' designed it, but we went with that,” he says.
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Of the company's internal F-A-S-T programme - promising to deliver 'focus, accountability, simplicity and trust' - he recalled brushes with establishment on house rules: “You had to be a corporate vice president to book conference rooms… you can't order 12 chairs, but you can order two lots of six… you can't have $3300 to get the carpets cleaned on the 17th floor…”
He hired a steam cleaner one Saturday and, discovering marble under the green shag, ended up ripping up the carpet. “That's what leaders need to do… now I've got awesome marble floors in the hallway,” he says.
Hayzlett instigated a revamp of the website with a focus on photography (A Thousand Words), and the low-cost sponsorship of the PGA Tour's Kodak Challenge… cancelling an Olympic sponsorship which had begun in 1896. (You might also watch the integration of Kodak product into 'Iron Man 2' on YouTube… but copyright-holder Paramount has blocked it.)
And 'Celebrity Apprentice', where the Kodak brand popped up every 13 seconds for 42 minutes.
Kodak 'makes, manages and moves' images, and when people share things the emortional value increases, Hayzlett says: “We've got the only product people will run back into a burning building for. I was in a building struck by lightning, and I'm lying there and someone runs past with a box of photos and says, 'are you OK'.”
And founder George Eastman is a big part of history with video and an 'Ask George' feature.
More ideas Kodak has applied to the business it does with customers: Business cards with a smaller pic, Twitter handle, and “any pic you like” on the back. “What if someone does something inappropriate? Well you get some press, and find out who the stupid people are. It's self selection.”
The Zi8 pocket video: “Someone suggested a microphone jack on Twitter, and we could do it in five months - in the old Kodak it would have been five years”. And the name… we wanted to run a competition to come up with a better one. The 'person in charge of contests' said there would be a fine, but we risked it. It was $300 and we got 28 million names. Idea to Tweet in 28 hours: “No-one's going to die, and we're doing things a whole lot faster.”
Social media: “If your'e not doing this, you should be,” Hayzlett says. “People Tweet us to 'take your printer and shove it up your USB port' but I want to hear that, and we educate one another through this online conversation. Great things we learn about each other.
“I have a Tweet that's been clicked over four million times, and software to find out where my best sources are so I can look after them. I don't just usher in church to be closer to god - it's a good thing, but I want people to get used to me taking money as it comes down the aisle.”
There's the eyeCamera 4.1 with its 'wink and shoot' shutter and image stabiliser “auto-enabled at happy hour”… another April 1 idea.
“We're having fun,” he says, “showing that Kodak is not just some big heartless corporation. People said you can't do that, we said yes, you can!”
Now Hayzlett is moving on. As someone who was brought up believing 'there's no such word as can't', I wish him well and hope the spirit prevails.
Peter Coleman
See the video (while it is on the NAA website)
http://www.naa.org/mediaxchange/player/video-archive/tuesday/recorded-stream.html
