Web Marketing Watch 100's of Internet Marketing training and tutorial videos.

Jeffrey Hayzlett Comes Back at Sage

A couple years ago I did a video where I was pretty harsh on Jeffrey Hayzlett about his position on print at Kodak.

Jeff agreed to do an interview with me about our differences.

This video represents a lot of what is good about social media.

A person with little to no power (myself) was able to have his voice heard. And the person with power (Jeff Hayzlett) listened and responded.

This is a representation of the signficant change social media has caused in business. A CMO of a Fortune 50 company engaging with an individual person is unique and exciting.

This will likely be a hard pill to swallow for people in high-level positions. But I think it's a new reality. Jeffrey Hayzlett gets it. I'm interested to see if others will as well.

http://twitter.com/jeffreyhayzlett
http://hayzlett.com/

Video transcript:

Sage Lewis: Hi, everybody, and welcome to the Web Marketing Watch.  Oh, today I have a very interesting opportunity.  I have – a couple of years ago I did a video where I was responding to a presentation I saw of Jeffrey Hayzlett, the CMO of Kodak.  He was doing this keynote at an event that I was at, and he’s an outstanding speaker and that type of thing, but I had a couple of different – differing views of what I thought maybe should happen potentially at Kodak, and so I did this video, and it just so happens that a couple of weeks ago I was at the Search Engine Strategy show in Chicago, and I ran into Jeffrey, and he came up to me and he was very, very kind and outgoing, and he gave me the opportunity of doing – of having a rebuttal video, and he said, “Yeah, sure, Sage.  Let’s do that.  Let’s have a conversation where we talk about what you said and what I said, and we can go from there.”  So without further ado, I bring you Mr. Jeffrey Hayzlett.  How’s it going, Jeff?

Jeffrey Hayzlett: Absolutely wonderful.  Thanks for having me.  I want one of those cool drum rolls and the music for me as well.  That was a pretty good intro, and in fact, I appreciate you having me on because not a lot of folks would do that, and I was really going after you, quite frankly.  You’re being so nice, but you went on the video.  You really took it to me, which was okay.  I have no problem with that, although I think you missed the whole theme of the speech.  That speech that night was about the power of printing and, of course, you were talking about the Web, and it gives us a great time to be able to talk about that and really give some different views.  I think you’ll find our views are pretty close to the same but just that night I happened to be talking about printing as opposed to the stuff that we were doing with the Internet.

Sage Lewis: Yeah, and that is probably where the miscommunication happened, that I thought that perhaps this was the sole position that you had and obviously that’s not the case, so –

Jeffrey Hayzlett: Now I do talk about printing.  I mean in my book, The Mirror Test, which you know about – it’s been a bestseller – I mean I have a chapter in the book about printing, but I also have a chapter about other social media and other things that are going on in the world because I’m a real believer.  I’m one of the top ten C-level executives in the world who Twitter.  I believe in social media, but at the same time, I talk about blended campaigns across the board, not just one type of campaign because I don’t think you can just have one kind of campaign anymore.

Sage Lewis: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.  So what do you think now?  Do you believe that print is the – is still the primary leader of marketing these days or do you feel that there is an evolution, that digital is starting to take the lead now?  What’s your thought on that?

Jeffrey Hayzlett: Oh, I don’t think it’s been an evolution.  I think it’s been a revolution without question and in such a short period of time.  If you look over the history of all marketing, print’s made a dominant area for a long time, but really I was at a conference, Sage, here recently down in Mexico and someone got up and spoke, and they were talking about traditional marketing and about traditional marketing, and finally I figured out she was talking about display advertising, and she was referring to that to being traditional marketing, and I knew then certainly the world has changed when we start referring to display advertising as traditional marketing where I would have probably put that more on the newer side.

But I think that without a question digital is where it’s at.  Digital is where it’s gonna be for a long time.  That doesn’t mean that print or some of the more traditional modes of – whether it be billboards or broadcast or radio or whatever it might be.  I think those are still valid tools in the arsenal without question, but digital has certainly been a big, big part of the growth.

Sage Lewis: Yeah, absolutely.  And so how do you feel now with Kodak and how that is all playing a part of that?  Do you feel that they really understand that and they’re moving in that direction quite fluidly?

Jeffrey Hayzlett: Well, I don’t think they’re going in as fast as I would still like them to be going and even when I was there they weren’t moving as fast as I would like to see us going, but the business has certainly made its transition to digital, both with digital products and its marketing.  It still goes back and wants to snap back into the old way of doing things from time to time because just like our bodies where we’re training our bodies to do different things, we snap back to the old way of doing things or snap into our old shapes or sizes or those kind of things and we go off our diets or whatever it might be.  But I think companies do the same thing, but I mean and the results, I mean they just announced some record results the other day, and so they seem to be doing really well.  I mean I’m out of the company for the last five months, but they seem to be doing very well.

Sage Lewis: Yeah.  And on September 29, they named Pradeep Jotwani their new CMO from HP, which is interesting, right?

Jeffrey Hayzlett: Well, I think everybody – I was like one of the only non-HPers there.  They finally reached down into the old HP alumni association and brought out somebody they’d worked with for a long time, but at least some of the former leadership being Antonio Perez and Phil Faraci, the chief operating officer, so they – I know they trust Pradeep.  I’ve had the opportunity to meet Pradeep on a couple of different occasions, and we’ve exchanged communication since he’s been onboard and, in fact, I even sent him a bouquet of yellow and red flowers after he was selected just to remind him of the colors of Kodak, not that he’s gonna need to know them, but I’m real happy to see him leading the group.

Sage Lewis: Yeah, yeah.  Well, without a doubt, you are – you’ve been tried and true to Kodak from the beginning and now it’s very interesting to watch your career evolve.  I’m on your Twitter page right now, and you have over 28,000 followers, and you – that puts you at the top of the list of CMOs on Twitter.  You’re very engaged in that.  Do you tweet all yourself?  Are you a – you do _______?

[Crosstalk]

Jeffrey Hayzlett: Well, I tweet myself.  I mean my staff – from time to time I might call somebody and say, “Hey, I’m – I don’t have time.  Can you tweet this?”  And then I say, “Just type this in for me.”  I do some of that and then – but, yeah, by and large I mean they’re very authentic.  I believe in being radically transparent, so you see me doing it and you – I talk to my team about how we get it done, and they help me from time to time, just like I might dictate an e‑mail or dictate a letter sometimes.  I’m just flying at the speed of light.  We say mach one right now, so they help me out a little bit.

Sage Lewis: Yeah, excellent.  Yeah.  And –

Jeffrey Hayzlett: But, yeah, I mean I come up with the stuff all the time.  I think – I saw a video that came across from a public relations student who said I was the best thing since sliced bread, so I tweeted out that I thought the education system is in good hands and that was one of the smartest kids I’ve ever seen in my life.

Sage Lewis: [Laughter] That’s right.  And I gotta say whenever I – when I see you speaking and you look at the real-timer’s all time Google, you are – everybody raves about you.  You’re a hit and if a person has an opportunity to see you speak, they certainly should, but – so –

Jeffrey Hayzlett: Well, I appreciate it.  Just try to be who you are.  I’m from South Dakota.  That’s just what we do.  If you ask me my opinion, I’m likely to tell you just like when, Sage, I didn’t like the way you did the video.  I went out.  I called you and when I saw you and said, “Hey, let’s do something different, man.  This isn’t…”  I didn’t think you were trying to go after me nor did I think you were trying to be negative, but I wanted to make sure that we got the facts out and we got a good twist on things, and that’s just the way I am.  Everybody’s entitled to do what they want, and that’s what makes this country so great.

Sage Lewis: Yeah, yeah.  The Internet is a very unique, interesting model that a guy like me can say something and then – and you see it, and that’s an interesting power because you’re the leader.  You’re leading this industry and that sort of thing, and so there is this unique shift, and I was – it meant a lot to me that you went up to me and shook my hand and just – it just goes to show you.  You talk about your three or four E’s I believe here.  I have a slide of that, the engage, educate –

Jeffrey Hayzlett: Yep, engagement, education, excite, and evangelize, and it’s just about getting engaged with people.  You might not like what they do.  You might not like what they say.  But at least engage with them, and I’ve been known to be very critical sometimes of people or being real, which I mean I might say something like, “Bite me” or like – or someone will write, “Why don’t you be more of a thought leader in a hundred and…?”  And I said, “Oh, you can’t – how can you be a thought leader in 140 characters?”

Or someone would – sometimes they would write to me and say, “I would like you to talk more about this.”  And I would say something like, “I don’t work for you, so I’m not writing about those things.”  And – or even when I’m back in South Dakota.  I remember I was back in South Dakota on my farm, and I was helping busting up a beaver dam that we had, and some animal activists come after me and said they didn’t like it, and I said, “Well, give me your address so I can deliver some of those beavers and some of those prairie dogs out to your house and see how you like it.”

Sage Lewis: Well, if nothing else, you are transparent and real and genuine, and I think we need more of that in the corporate world.  Do you think more CMOs, more CEOs should be Twittering?

Jeffrey Hayzlett: Oh, I think you should always be listening to your customers and in conversations and whether you choose to do that through Twitter – it’s right for some people – or whether you pick up the phone or whether you go out and see them in person or you work on the retail floor or go see customers at tradeshows, I think that’s what they should be doing, but do what’s comfortable for you.  You certainly – if you’re not going to be doing it then you should have somebody doing it because you need to – Sam Kinison said, “Starving people in the desert,” he said, “move to where the food is.  The food doesn’t grow in the desert.  Only sand is in the desert.”  And so if you have people on Twitter, you have people on Facebook, go to where the food is.

Sage Lewis: Excellent.  All right, Jeff.  Thanks so much for the time.  Thanks for participating.  I appreciate it.  You’re a real down-to-earth, real genuine guy.  I appreciate it.

Jeffrey Hayzlett: Hey, my friend, thank you, and I’ll be looking forward to seeing you in Akron very soon.  I’m coming back up that way.

Sage Lewis: I know you are.  I’ll be sure to be there for – I’ll be in the front row.

Jeffrey Hayzlett: All right, my friend.  Thank you so much.

Sage Lewis: All right, everybody.  Thanks so much.  Thank you, Jeffrey Hayzlett and happy marketing!

[End of Audio]