There are just a handful of CMOs who are as Twitter-happy as Jeffrey Hayzlett. The Eastman Kodak marketer, who has around 16,000 followers, is more than just the lead marketer for Kodak; he's also often its prime defender, throwing verbal jabs at rival Hewlett-Packard as the two exchange claims over printer ink costs. Just as Kodak has migrated its product line from analog to digital, Hayzlett, who joined the company in 2006, has weaned the company from events like the Olympics (which it had sponsored since 1896) to increasingly spread the message online. Hayzlett, who will appear on Celebrity Apprentice 3 on March 21, talked to Brandweek about those efforts. Below are some excerpts:
Brandweek: You are pretty accessible for a CMO. Most are not. Is it a matter of style or philosophy?
Jeffrey Hayzlett: I don't know. People should be people and if someone calls you, you should call them back.
BW: Most of the time, you have to go through someone else to reach a CMO.
JH: I don't know why that is. For me, it's part of Kodak's brand. We're a very personable brand so therefore we should be very reachable, but I've always been that way all my life. I come from South Dakota.
BW: What's the thinking behind your new tagline, "It's time to smile"?
JH: There's been a lot of bad stuff going on in the world, so we're telling everyone it's time to smile. It's time for new business, it's time for new growth, it's time for change, so let's get going.
BW: You talk about the four E's—engage, educate, excite and evangelize. Was that something you came up with?
JH: That's something that I've been espousing for years. I was applying it to growing your business. That's a great way to do it. If you're a small business or a large business, you engage with your customer, you educate them, you get them excited and then they'll go out and evangelize. But now you can do it with greater scale.
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