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Kodak Builds Social Into Camera, Highlights Search, YouTube In Campaign.

Kodak

Search engine marketing has become a bigger piece of Kodak's overall marketing plan, but a new share feature built into a camera takes the campaign into product designs. Leslie Dance, Kodak's vice president of brand marketing and communications, explains what she calls a "360 approach" to rebranding and supporting the more than 100-year-old company.

That approach led Kodak to bid on non-branded and branded terms, looking toward "owning search terms" before the product reaches the market to make consumers aware that they are on the way. Each time a campaign gets set in motion, the agency supporting search marketing must come to the table with a fresh approach to reach consumers through search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search or pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.

As part of Kodak's rebranding effort, the company launched a YouTube brand channel and a new campaign called the "Calculator Challenge." With this interactive campaign, consumers can determine how much money they might save on printer ink if they buy Kodak's products and stop overpaying for ink cartridges. Once consumers determine the potential amount saved, they are encouraged to upload a brief video describing what they would do with their savings.

Kodak's 24-hour ad takeover on YouTube for ink cartridges garnered 48 million impressions, 200,000 clicks and high click-through rate of .55%, Dance says. Between March 20, through April 7, Kodak estimates 22,000 video views on the Kodak brand channel YouTube page, and about 3,000 calculator starts.

Peter Gardiner, partner, chief media officer at Deutsch, which began working with Kodak more than a year ago, designed the YouTube part of the campaign. The notion of the campaign was to get consumers "fired up about being ripped off by the big ink companies."

Describing a dashboard that provides feedback on how each part of the campaign works, Dance says companies don't need to spend millions of dollars to target specific consumers.

Kodak created an online performance index its marketers can view through the dashboard. That means looking at more than traditional click-through rates by following consumers through the marketing funnel to develop benchmarks, as well as rating each ad in the campaign to determine where to spend campaign dollars.

Kodak's personal imaging unit became the latest to follow this benchmark for ad campaigns. A television spot that began running this week highlights what happens when consumers press the "share" button on its 530 camera. The campaign message carries the theme "The real Kodak moment happens when you share." The campaign supports print, a microsite, Facebook and YouTube.

Dance says the company has been dabbling in mobile, too. Location-based services and coupons are on the horizon. A few tests have been done with mobile coupons. Mobile efforts could make more sense if the company ties the campaigns to specific stores, such as Staples or Best Buy.

Partners + Napier provided support for the latest TV spots, Facebook, YouTube and microsite work. The campaign called "Real Kodak Moments" announced Tuesday aims to emphasize the connection between family and friends. Aside from Deutsch, and Partners + Napier, other agencies supporting a variety of campaigns for Kodak include Omnicom Group's Ketchum, WPP's Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, and Rabinovici & Associates.

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