The value of an Internet communication strategy

By: Libella Blogging Team

Free translation out of a blog post on: http://libellablog.wordpress.com

Communication presents a constant evolution process, models are changing, but the greatest changes are developing in the media itself. Currently we are standing in the 2.0 communication era, thanks to the internet and social networks everybody can generate content, we can become journalists, we can feel experts in any topic, and we can have an opinion for everything.

The fact that anybody can generate content doesn’t mean that everybody can do it properly, that’s why it’s important for companies, large and small, round up around communication experts. It is of no use to have hundreds of followers on blogs and other social networks if there isn’t a strategy around the platforms.

Having internet presence doesn’t mean posting daily messages onto social networks, or having an interactive web site; you have to know how to integrate all the tools together to direct the messages appropriately and directed to the correct target audience. Now-a-days we have to understand how to interact with users.

Internet presence is growing in importance, that’s the reason companies have to know how to build and maintain these spaces. Opening social network accounts is easy, getting followers could be as well, if you are a famous brand, but having a great web site, or thousands of followers on your Twitter account won’t work if you don’t have a strategy for these media, since you are not targeting your audience properly.

So, how will you differentiate from your competitors? Build a communication strategy and add quality on your contents.

Kodak: The end of a paradigm by Jacob Bañuelos Ph.D

By: Jacob Bañuelos
Free translation done from an article published in: Virtualis Blog
Published by El Universal at http://blogs.eluniversal.com.mx/weblogs_detalle15631.html

It is overwhelming to observe how the empire of the digital image is devouring, gradually but inexorably, that which used to be an empire of analog photography. It is mainly paradoxical to watch the agonic downfall of a former giant of the image, such as Kodak, which had every mean to expand its dominion during the 21st century.

Kodak’s situation is paradigmatic in many aspects. It was founder of the empire of the image industry, since its birth in 1880; also it was the first mass manufacturer of a camera with portable film until 1900 (the Brownie’s price was one dollar); it was the first inventor of a digital imagining, over which the company holds 1,100 patents.

Nevertheless, currently Kodak’s deficit rises to 6.750 million dollars due to underfunded pension schemes, additional to the over 1,500 million in debt with creditors such as Amazon, Wal-Mart, Nokia, and Disney. The company closed 13 manufacturing plants, 130 labs of photographic processing, and fired 47,000 employees since 2003. Its current payroll consists of 18,800 workers, nothing compared to the 145, 300 back in 1988. It no longer belongs to the Dow Jones or the S&P500 and it lost 90% of its public founding during 2011. (elpais.com, 20-01-2012).

A North American emblem is crashing. Kodak just filed for a Citigroup credit of 950 million dollars, with an 18 month term, in order to face its debts and keep its doors open. The CDS (Credit Default Swaps) dictate that the company has a 92% chance of failing to comply with the payment to its creditors. Which are the chances that Kodak has to manage to survive?

• Kodak trusts to win in the dispute over patent infringement on their digital imaging treatment, pending with RIM (manufacturers of BlackBerry), Apple, and HTC, which will give Kodak over 1 billion dollars of maneuvering capability.
• The company holds 10,000 patents. 1,100 are used for digital image processing in several devices and mobile phones. The revenue which will come from selling these patents could reach 3 billion dollars, since this amount was the same the company perceived for its licensing since 2003. 75% of the company’s income during 2011 came from the digital image business unit.
• The company is trying to keep working on digital imagining, scientific materials, and printing technologies for graphic arts and medical sectors.
• Kodak is restructuring. Its business units will be: Commercial and Consumer, replacing Graphic Communications (printing and publishing equipment); Consumer Image Digitalization (cameras and printers); and Photofinishing and entertainment (film and photographic paper).

What did we learn from Kodak?

• A model for simplification on the technological production process of the image, born from the famous phrase “you press the button, we do the rest” in 1888, patenting the film spool. This model of simplification is being applied by the current leaders in image capture, including Apple.
• A culture of photography. The so called “Kodak moments”, a moral of images which taught entire generations to see and collect a “happy world” in family albums. Of interest is the book by Richard Chalfen, Snapshots Versions of life, to understand the “Kodak Culture”.
• We’ve also inherited some sort of “industrial democratization” of the image, with globalization tints.

How could Kodak go bankrupt with all its potential?

• Kodak’s mistake was to be overconfident, with a lack of vision, and maybe some sort of pride, as heavy as the company was, of a stagnant burocracy. Above everything else, it tried to resist, in midst of a digital revolution, with an old fashioned business model, neglecting consumer trends, based on selling film and print, mistake!
• The company also forgot to renew their commercial strategy and culture, which was developed with characteristics dating from the pre-Internet era. This means: understanding a new paradigm of sharing, using, and capturing photographic images in a new social culture of the image, evolved from Internet usage and social networks.

The rise of Asian giants as relevant actors in digital photography started in 1990. Canon, Nikon, Fuji, Olympus, and recently Panasonic, Sony, LG, and Samsung fast-tracked the end of Kodak’s paradigm
A third milestone: mobile phones with camera developed a new technologic paradigm, both cultural and social, in photography. The event gave place to the current boom of images being shared in social networks such as Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram, which main capacity resides in the user’s interaction.

Despite the denial by Kodak’s CEO, Antonio M. Pérez, on the proposal of manufacturing phones, and its suggestion by the Director of the Mexican branch of the company, Carlos Domínguez, the future of the company has to transit through mobile phones. Apple understood this while creating iPhone, Google did the same while acquiring Motorola, which, by the way, Kodak holds a cooperation agreement for 10 years, kicked-off by the Motozine ZN5 launching in 2008.

Kodak’s future may well depend on a full alliance with Google and Motorola to conform a magic formula: cellular+camera+Internet+social networks. The new industrial paradigm of the photography has the following key points:

• Photography is no longer held inside a drawer, it is shared in social networks and it’s turning into a collaborative image with high potential of social transformation, and, above all, of emotional bond linkage.
• Photography becomes images, it is hybrid, it nurtures from other expression resources such as graphic arts, video, sound, design and 3D.
• The universe of apps is expanding and becoming a main factor of the new business model, they are a key in the new software market for visual treatment.
• There is a new culture of the image, the Kodak’ers are becoming Snap’ers.
• The new dominating model is based on mobile devices built in with camera plus Internet plus social networks.

The quote by Antoine Wiertz seems visionary. In 1836 while making reference to the daguerreotype, cited by Bejamin in its Letter from Paris (2): Painting and Photography, and which description reminisces to the mobile, instrument of expansion and growth of the photography:

“A few years ago, a machine has been born; honor of our times, which daily amazes our thoughts and terrorizes our eyes. At century dawn, this machine will be the brush, the canvas, the colors, the dexterity, the habit, the patience, the first glance, the touch, the allegory, the glaze, the model, the finish, which is up till now, expressed by painting…”. I would add…shared in a social network.