An Inside Look At Kodak's New Fairly Priced Ink Campaign

Sometimes you just have to love a marketing campaign that starts off with what many people might call an oxymoron. Fairly Priced Ink from Kodak seems like that kind of effort when you first hear about it. After all, when have you ever known printer ink to be anything close to "fairly priced?" As it turns out, it is that unexpected positioning that is at the heart of what makes the "Print And Prosper" campaign so interesting. I learned about it a few weeks back from a post on one of Kodak's team blogs and shelved it to eventually write about in more detail for some of the marketing lessons it offers.

Here's my take on this campaign and 5 lessons that are worth taking from it:

1. Skip the catchy campaign name. 

I have certainly been in my fair share of meetings where any campaign idea needs to have a catchy name. Sometimes the names work and sometimes they don't. For this campaign, Kodak could easily have gone with something more marketing-like such as the "inkvolution" or "inkalicious" (don't laugh, you know you've heard of these kinds of names before). Instead, they used a phrase that we could all understand … "fairly priced ink." In a split second, you know what the campaign is about, and as I said before, your curiosity about how such as thing could even exist would likely cause you to dig deeper to learn more. Marketing mission achieved.

2. Offer a visual comparison. 

In order to deliver on the idea of having fairly priced ink, it is important to define what UNFAIRLY priced ink looks like. On the site there is a very smart feature where Kodak puts their ink cartridges alongside others from other manufacturers and not only shares much many more pages you can print with their ink, but also how their ink is streamlined across all their printers so you could interchange them without having to buy entirely new ink cartridges. Putting the cartridges right next to one another makes it clear how you can save across printers and offers a proof point to their own authenticity and "fairness." 

3. Give consumers a tangible number. 

The premise of fairly priced ink, on the bottom line, is that you will save money. Of course, to make this real for a consumer, it helps to be able to share exactly HOW MUCH money they will save. Through a handy calculator tool on the site, you can figure out exactly how much you will be able to save and even take that and put it on a badge that you can download and share on your blog or profile on a social networking site. Though I'm not sure who would be so proud of saving $30 bucks on ink that they would post it on their blog – the idea that you will save so much by switching to Kodak that you might just want to broadcast it comes through loud and clear. Ink3 Ink2 Ink4

4. Create a bigger movement. 

To make the individual experience part of a larger collective, the site also features an interesting creative way to amplify all the people who visit that site by giving anyone a chance to join the movement and add their story to "America's Ink Stain." The map on the site shows a collection of people who have shared what they would have spent with the money that they could have saved on ink. The real result is that all these collective experiences add fuel to the idea that you are overpaying for ink right now and missing out on all the experiences that you could have had with that money instead. 

5. Integrate the product information. 

The last but crucial point to make is that this is not just a feel good branding or awareness campaign. The site also features information on Kodak's line of printers and real information on how to get one. Instead of shying away from including product information, the site includes it front and center without taking away from the intent or power of the site.

 
NOTE: Kodak is currently a client of Ogilvy (my employer), however I have not worked on any paid efforts for the brand, have not been compensated for this post in any way and identified the topic and chose to write this post without any prompting from the brand or team members
associated with it.