Building hearts and minds

Jeffrey Hayzlett was at TiECON 2010 and spread the social media news for those who weren’t yet convinced.

He is well known. He is qualified as a “high-tech marketer genius”. His book The Mirror Test, just launched him to the sky. Jeffrey Hayzlett is the responsible on how Kodak has been adopting social media practices. His actual position is Chief Marketing Officer at Kodak, until May, when we will leave the company and try the independence waters of entrepreneurship.

For some people, the world is moving too fast, so they’ll wait it out until the new standards develop. Hayzlett is not one of them, he embraces the Silicon Valley spirit:: “I’m about speed. I have a program inside of Kodak that’s called F.A.S.T. It means speed, right? Even if we screw up, let’s do it faster. Social media is nothing but a tool. I look at social media like a fax machine. It’s just a different way of me telling the world what I’m doing, or what’s going on. Getting my message out.”
 

At web’s speed

The web speeds all this up for brands. But they ignore it at their peril. Hayzlett recalled how he deal at the company: “At Kodak, our complaints used to be like 40-some percent of our Internet traffic. You know, before, cause that’s just the way it works. Now it’s less than 7 because we integrated with this and said Okay, when someone says ‘fuck you and your fucking product, you fucking suck'. Okay, that’s someone who has a problem. I wanna hear that. I wanna know that person. And I wanna reach out to them and say ‘what’s your problem? I call it the R.O.I., return on ignoring. So, if you ignore these people, these conversations are going on with or without you. I’d much rather be engaged with them.”

Today, brands are having a conversation with their public, and sometimes those conversations aren’t all warm and fuzzy. There’s no doubt that all this change doesn’t come easy, and given his outgoing nature you can imagine that from time to time the folks at Kodak might wish if he were, ehm, a bit less ‘social. Hayzlett tells one story this way: “I’ve had in the corporate world my public relations, community relations people walk up to me and say Jeff, I don’t think this is appropriate that you wrote “Bite Me” to this guy. I look at them and I go, well that’s who I am. The guy said something very offensive, he had no right to say it, I’m sorry. They say well please be nicer, so now I write “Please Bite Me”.

Kodak got its mojo back

There’s no doubt that there’s good news at Kodak these days. First quarter profits of 119 million dollars may not have wowed Wall Street, but it certainly bodes well for the digital transformation underway at a company whose revenues were primarily film just a mere five years ago. For Hayzlett -the 'mojo' is about getting the brand re-aligned with the passion of capturing emotions and sharing them. “It's just we’ve finally been able to change the mood,” said Hayzlett. “If you change the mood in any business, you can be successful. That's my opinion. Or at least if you’re not successful, you’re having fun just going down. So at least do that. You know? And I think most companies, their best days are ahead of them not behind them. And if you think of it from that perspective, you can do different things.”

Go social media

Social media is the killer advertising? No way. Hayzlett thinks it is more a matter of connect, rather than sell. In his enthusiastic speech, Hayzlett explained: “You don't just vomit up information and sell, sell, sell. There are some things that you can do; contests and some other things that get people attracted to it from a brand prospective. And really build community. So it’s not about building eyes and ears, it’s about building hearts and minds. And I think that’s what’s really good. If your business isn’t doing this, then you’re really screwing up. I think you’re making a big, big mistake."

What Hayzlett knows, from his perspective as a CMO of a big traditional company that struggles with digital era, is what is going on inside a transformation organization. “The secret is in sharing: ideas, conversations, even company secrets.

When we developed a social media policy in the company, I said: Share 'em.' Some folks thought those were internal documents. I said 'share ‘em,’. It was like a nuclear secret or something, or state secret from the United States Government, or Chinese Government? No, it's just a bunch of stuff about blogging, and Facebook, and Twitter. You know it’s something we do. If we share it with people, then they’ll talk about us and they’ll say this is great, and look what they’ve done and these guys are leaders. I say, hey lets share, lets be creative. Lets be innovative. Lets have some fun.”

He loves communication. So Hayzlett never stops tweeting, speaking, blogging, and Facebooking the message of the book all across the social media universe. Working hard to be authentic, even if it puts him at odds with his image as a big time CMO from time to time. “Somebody said 'I bought your book and it's so exciting I'm buying it again for other people. And he said I’m stoked, remembers Hayzlett. So I said, Not only am I stoked, I just wet myself. Somebody wrote back you shouldn’t tweet that. Well that’s me, that’s who I am. So what you see reflective of a major CMO of a major company is that I’m just me. So why not be me and I think if you’re anything else than that, I think quite frankly online, and Twitter, and Facebook, and social media, you’re uncovered pretty quick.”