Conseil Web Social

I’ve recently had the pleasure of interviewing Jeffrey Hayzlett face to face for the second time.  Unfortunately, there’s no video, even though the Kodak Zl8 is one of my primary / preferred blogging tools.

Video and photos put a certain distance between you and the interviewee.  As I have previously carried out a video interview with Jeffrey with the support of TechToc TV, I decided to return to a less formal yet honourable style.

So, Jeffrey and I had an informal chat whilst he was in the mddle of doing his evangelizing (both internal and extrernal to Kodak).  We decided to break with the common form of interviewing, as using media has its limits.

During this interview, it struck me that it’s questioning the assumptions about personalization, and the necessary research to clarify those assumptions, that is Jeffrey focus for his work with Kodak these days.

So, in response to a question about the growth in the number of people using different Kodak accounts on the Social Web, Jeffrey told me that from approximately 8,000 when I last visited there are now more than 12,500 registered users.  Sure, but what about official accounts recognized by Kodak ?

Well, Jeffrey doesn’t see any real difference between his numbers and Kodak’s official numbers.  In fact, he represents the human face of Kodak on Twitter, and it’s his activities on behalf of Kodak (and thanks to Kodak) that explains the success of the growth in the number of followers.  There is no title of official Twitterer or Twit-in-Chief at Kodak, but, the company has employees who are bloggers (about Kodak and its products and serices) in different countries, notably England and France.

Regarding the question of ROI (Return on Investment) and putting aside the notion of « Return on Ignorance », Jeffrey is quite direct and states that the commercial success of the most recent web-oriented products (such as the best-selling Zl8) is directly due to his and his team’s use of social media .. especially the infamous word-of-mouth dynamics encountered in networks of consumers and bloggers.  He notes as well that if reduced budgets for launching products is combined with increased sales revenues, it’s easy to see a convincing ROI as a result.

I was somewhat more surprised by Jeffrey’s response to my question about the aggressive use of crowdsourcing relative to the early positive and strong sales results.  Jeffrey understands perfectly well the notion of co-creation and supporting the launch of products and services with the additional support of the « crowd », but stated that strategically he prefers to limit his efforst to more straightforward communications and marketing for the time being.

We then started talking about people whom we defined as « twitter snobs » (a term which since Jeff Pulver’s #140 conference in New York has taken on – thanks to crowdsourcing -  the term « twanker »  (Crowdsourcing a new term for bad behavior on Twitter ). Even more ambitious is the process used to decide about the replacement of Zl8, where some crowdsourcing activities identified finalists for the process of deciding upon a replacement.

He noted that Kodak is still far from considering the use of crowdsourcing in the ways it’s been deployed by Starbucks, Lego, Dell or others, but it is indeed a strategic choice that may be used when faced with issues like time pressures.  However, generally he is of the opinion that accessing the thoughts of several thousand voices is too complicated for Kodak to handle.

With respect to the issues of facing the change(s) internal to Kodak due to the use of social media for marketing activities, he suggested it’s important for managers and collaborators to KISS (keep it simple stupid).  The changes encountered are, he feels, not THE major priority for Kodak, and he notes that the booklet « Social Media Tips » is an excellent guide for people both internal and external to Kodak regarding the uses of social media.

In wrapping up .. we did not get from Jeffrey the name of the successor to the Kodak Zl8 nor from Peggy Mourmant, the Kodak representative responsible for the new product.

So, Kodak  … give us devotees a new Zl8 with a name that really means something … accompanied by great looks, new and more colors, great touch-and-feel .. and it will no doubt be the killer product of 2010 !

PS.  The term evangelist is used in the context of evangelizing a new product or service and its impacts on corporate culture that will be necessary to make the transition from Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0, and not in the religious sense of the word.

Thank’s so much to Jon husband for his kind help in this translation.