Superhero Yourself? Kodak Launches A New Viral Marketing Promotion: “Make Me Super”.

I’m an old softie when it comes to Kodak, as some of my favorite people in the world live in Rochester, New York, home of the company’s longtime corporate headquarters. Many of these favorites at one time actually worked at Kodak — until the one-time photo pioneer missed the turn-off to the digital age. Since the inception of the Hail Mary turnaround strategy in 2004, the world’s biggest film manufacturer has slashed some 27,000 jobs and cut major product lines in an aggressive attempt to play catch up. One of these attempts is last week’s launch of an online marketing promotion. Kodak is jumping on the viral bandwagon most recently driven by smash viral success, Office Max’s Elf Yourself.

OfficeMax let people turn themselves into elves. But online photo service, the 70-million member strong Kodak Gallery, thinks people might prefer superheroes to elves. The end result is “Make Me Super,” at Makemesuper.com. Consumers are invited to upload their own pictures to a video showing them wearing superhero Spandex and capes, ostensibly transforming themselves into superheroes and Kodak into a massively viral winner. (See the Guru above as a Farrah-hair’d SuperGirl)

Wisely, Kodak enlisted EVB, the San Francisco based wizco behind a growing list of marketing hits like Office Max, Levi’s ‘Unbutton Your Beasts’ and Intuit’s JingleMaker.

Smartly targeting its user base of fervent gift-purchasing females, Kodak created a strong retail component, allowing the Superhero photos to be added to mousepads, shirts, mugs and other personalized giftware.

Kodak is also pursuing their consumer audience in an unusual-for-Kodak way: instead of the traditional media plan, the company is turning to the Blog-Hive of buzzy influential bloggers, along with viral video focused sites and even online superhero hangouts. The marketing team is hoping this strategy will attract a younger and more digitally savvy consumer.

Guru’s Take: By now readers of this blog know I am something of a curmudgeon. I criticized another recent viral marketing promotion ‘Yearbook Yourself’ for oddly not explaining the link between playing with its groovy make-over technology and being forced to register at an online shopping center. I criticized a Seventh Generation ‘Virtual Tree Maker’ for skipping the opportunity to make its viralizer more substantive. Now I am putting on my Critic’s hat for Kodak and wondering about such basics as why I can’t name myself . . . I am forced to be either Super Girl/Boy/Cat/Dog/Momma/Grandmother etc. I wanted to be Super Guru! Why can’t I choose their Super Girl video but add my own name? Personalization is paramount. In truth, I am rather underwhelmed by Make Me Super. I honestly wish it had grabbed me by the cape and convinced me to send my spandex self off to my network of link-loving pals.

I also wish Kodak/EVB had created cross-promotions with the places target women 25-44 frequently visit: Facebook, Ning, etsy, MySpace and all those gazillions of Mom blogs. Why not make a deal with BlogHer?  With the DVD release of uber-superhero Iron Man, which pretty much coincides with the Superhero release.   Maybe all these efforts are still to come?

In fact, I wonder about Kodak Gallery, which is already skewing older, now that so many of the popular sites are either social networking sites or have social networking features — the stickiest of which are the hugely trafficked photo-sharing areas.

And while I know it’s not really fair to compare viral veteran Elf Yourself to the newbie Superhero, here’s how the Elf did last year:

The Elfin’ Impact from 11/20/07 to 1/2/08 :- Over 193 million site visits
- Over 123 million elves were created
- 60 elves were created per second
- Users spent a combined average of 2,600 years on the site
- Ranked #51 most visited website on the web (HitWise Intelligence)
- Ranked #1 on “Movers & Shakers” (Alexa Rankings)
- Ranked as top 1,000 website in 50 countries (Alexa Rankings)

Source: Elf Yourself 2007 “>Metrics Marketing blog.

And finally, Elizabeth McDowell, Publicist for EVB San Francisco, the co-creator of “Elf Yourself,” says “The success is in part due to three fundamental characteristics 1) Keep it Simple 2) Make it Personal and 3) Give People a Reason to Pass it on.”

Go check out Make Me Super and tell me if Kodak followed those three characteristics.