They've been called "an iconic photographicfilm pioneer." And a "legendary American photography company." And the "image of film-based photography." Unfortunately, what Kodak can't be called is a 21st century digital image brand.
By all rights, the 131-year old company isn't really much of a brand anymore. Not if you expect a "brand" to stand for something meaningful and differentiating in the mind of consumers. Oh, and filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection doesn't count. Which is what Eastman Kodak is preparing to do in case it can't sell its digital patents to raise capital.
Yes, you read that right, "digital patents." Kodak invented the digital camera nearly 40 years ago. OK, it was as big as a toaster and only operated in black and white, but it was digital. Talk about a Kodak moment! But back then Kodak didn't bother to capitalize on their innovation. Why should they, they probably thought? In 1976 they had a 90% share of the US film market, so they relied on film and photographs and photographic developing, and digital be damned!
By the time the film business went into sharp decline about 10 years back, they found themselves playing catch-up with brands who had capitalized upon - and were believably identified with - digital. And imaging - not photographs.
Going back to "brand" for a moment, if you really think about what the Kodak brand (when it was a brand) stood for, it was not the taking of pictures, not the point-and-shoot cameras, but the capturing of a moment in time via processing - film to negatives, negatives to pictures, pictures to mantelpieces and memories. And we loved them for that.
But then along came digital cameras and phones with camera and jpegs, and analogue photography became a piece of nostalgia and a sign of simpler times. But "nostalgia" turned into something "old-fashioned," and soon old-fashioned became unfashionable. Digital became more state-of-the-art, and by then Kodak couldn't get consumer to believe that they could successfully play in that arena, no matter how many patents they had.
BTW, none of this is 20:20 brand hindsight. All one needed to do was accurately measure consumer expectations and have a finger on the pulse on what was driving the imaging category and all would have come into sharp focus.
Both digitally and financially.