Last year, a video created by Kodak for The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference made its way all over the Internet. A blue-suited investor-relations executive started giving a staid, predictable financial presentation exalting the Eastman Kodak company and its creation of Kodak Moments. Suddenly, the speaker launched into an energetic tongue-in-cheek exultation of the new Kodak digital technology, building to a frenzied cry:

“You were a Kodak moment once, and by God you’ll be one again. Only this time it’s digital!”

And not a moment too soon.

Kodak and many other former brand giants have struggled to keep up with the pace and complexity of this new digital age, and have been suffering for it. Kodak’s video publicly and wittily – and, most importantly, via new media – acknowledged its outdated image and old, passé voice, and signaled that the frumpy, unhip grandfather of the camera industry intends to blow up its old voice and change how they communicate.

FROM CORPORATE VOICE TO DIGITAL VOICE
I introduced the CORPORATE VOICE concept in the 1980s to create communications programs that unified a company’s diverse exposures and built a distinctive, focused, coherent identity that would rise above all the background noise. Back then, the CORPORATE VOICE was channeled into controlled one-way communications segmented into a limited number of traditional media.

Everything has changed since then. The ongoing digital revolution has raised the din of information exponentially. The messaging environment has changed radically. Speed, novelty, distraction, and noise rule. It is thus more imperative than ever for everyone, from the start-up to the not-for-profit to the Fortune 100 player, to recalibrate their CORPORATE VOICE to find the right pitch, the proper tone, the ideal volume, and perfect placement to ensure crystalline audibility.

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