Kodak Zooms In on Women

NEW YORK Kodak is using an arsenal of national media properties anchored by assets under the recently formed Women@NBCU banner to drive a value message for its fledgling printer and ink business.

The new campaign, which directly challenges some of the leading competitors in the field, uses a combination of branded integrations on properties including Bravo, Oxygen and iVillage, and, to a lesser degree, Nickelodeon. Print, online and TV spots drive viewers to a Web site, printandprosper.com, where users can compare ink prices with those from brands including HP, Epson, Canon, Lexmark and Brother. Those companies either declined comment or didn't return calls seeking comment on the Kodak campaign.

Leslie Dance, vp, brand marketing and communication at Kodak, said the company is targeting "ultra-high burners." Internally, said Dance, Kodak marketers profiled the consumers they're after as female, "40, feisty and facing frugality." These women, she added, are usually a family's "memory keeper."

Market research, Dance said, also showed that "by far the largest consumer dissatisfaction with home printers is the cost of ink."

Deutsch, the Interpublic shop that won the estimated $40-50 million media account (printer and ink) last November, approached NBCU about anchoring the TV portion of the campaign around the Women@NBCU properties.

Peter Gardiner, chief media officer at Deutsch, said the combination of platforms and properties within the Women@NBCU collection of assets and the network's ability to offer creative integrations appealed to the marketer.

The Kodak deal, said Maryam Banikarim, svp, sales marketing at NBCU, was "one of the first" major packages assembled under the Women@NBCU banner since the unit was formed last summer. Other deals will be unveiled soon, she said.

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