AdTech: San Francisco

A few weeks ago, I attended the AdTech Conference in San Francisco. Luckily my airline only declared bankruptcy and didn’t shut down their planes (kudos to you Frontier!) so I arrived in time to see the first keynote presentation of the conference: This Is Not Your Father’s Kodak. The speaker was Jeffrey Hayzlett, the Chief Business Development Officer and VP of Eastman Kodak Company.

He gave a great speech that talked about how Kodak has had to reinvent itself and discussed the direction they are taking the company. Kodak has been around since 1888 and was always known as the leader in film. To show why Kodak needed to change, he asked the crowd to raise their hands if they owned a digital camera. Nearly everyone had a hand in the air. Then he asked how many had actually developed a roll of film in the last 6 months: I saw 4 people (out of a couple hundred) with their hands raised. Hayzlett said, “Welcome to my world!”

His proof that Kodak has changed:

• 60% of the people at Kodak were not there 4 years ago.
• 70% of their overall revenue comes from digital sources.
• Their primary focus is on their social network site– Kodak Gallery (the 2nd largest social networking site with 70 million users) and on their new printers.

Kodak Gallery allows users to store and share photos. They can also order prints, make photo books and put photos on about anything (and what cat lover doesn’t want a pillow with Gizmo’s face on it?). And, their biggest goal is to make it more interactive between users (make the site truly a Web 2.0 site). He feels they understand the importance of community, and he teased the audience to keep an eye for exciting new features.

While I was there, I had the opportunity to visit with some of my clients & prospects and most seemed to have one thing in common: Social networking. One customer of mine is a premier provider of communication software for online communities and is used by sites like MySpace and Friendster. One prospect, bills itself as the leader in social media marketing with sites like PayPerPost.com. These companies along with a reinvented Kodak show the emphasis on community and Web 2.0 in business today.