Teams, expectations and salary caps

We, as New Yorkers tend to be a very picky bunch. We want the best our money can buy, want nothing but the “real deal”, complain about things that work 99% of the time, make our opinions known about everything, whether or not our neighbors (or the rest of America) like it or not.

So, we expect the same out of baseball teams. Only the best, only players who give 110%. But the injury streak the Mets have been subject to, to the poor mental mistakes make me wonder if it’s realistic to expect this level of play from a team mostly made up of second and third string players, expected to play mistake free baseball night after night.

I’m one of the worst offenders - my relationship with this team is nothing short of love. And after the disappointment of the last three years and our new shiny home, it’s tough again not to have hope for my team.

I love how the NFL’s salary cap provides parity across the league - allowing everyone a shot at success if they can put together a good season or two.

But baseball is different. Year after year, there are whole teams who never have a shot at the playoff or the World Series, who end up selling their talent to the teams who can afford it. Does the love for their teams change? Or is the hope still the same? The expectations of your team have to be more mild and realistic, right?

For a long time, New York has been on the other side of this pendulum (moreso the Yankees than the Mets, in my opinion). But when your high priced talent has injuries, and all you’re left with is the rest of your team, you’re left with these extremely high expectations, with a team not used to playing with this sort of pressure. And this is where the Mets are right now. And it’s weird. But it’s also fascinating.

I can’t help but think of parables about how one player doesn’t make a team, and how building teams with different skills is important and offering the opportunity for all to contribute makes everyone better.

We all form teams. Personal teams. Professional teams. Educational teams. Emotional teams. And most of the time, we work in defined roles and spaces. But sometimes, the strands get tighten. Crisis is the best real test of these teams. It’s the thing that breaks them apart or pulls them together - stronger than ever.

We’ll see about the Mets, but the bigger questions are about us.

Is your team ready to play a person down? Are you a good team player? Are you a good team leader? How can you make yourself better? Are you ready for crisis?

They were listening

Let’s review.

A few weeks ago, Kodak decided to change their storage policy for people who stored photos on their Kodak Gallery Service, requiring a minimum purchase on a sliding scale that started at $4.99 and went up to $19.99 annually to start at the end of May. And if people didn’t meet the minimum purchase photo requirements by the end of May, their photos would be deleted.

This put people like me, who smartly, or not smartly, had used Kodak Gallery as backup storage for a collection of more than 3000 photos. Kodak had claimed the primary reason for the change was to repurpose storage used by people who didn’t make any purchases for people who did. Fair enough. So, I endeavored to remove my photos from storage, and delete my account. Unfortunately, there was no easy way for me to download these photos without giving money to Kodak. I shared my story, and found out I wasn’t alone.

The #kodakfail Twitter hashtag grows out of this, and a few other people pile on. I tweet at Kodak’s Chief Blogger, and Kodak’s CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett for reactions. I share my story with BarCampNYC4 in session about Twitter customer service. My biggest point, the communication about this was a real fail, and they’ve missed my use case - someone with a lot of photos who has no way to possibly meet their new requirements without an intense effort in time or money.

Kodak deletes my photos.

My story gets picked up by eConsultancy, Consumerist and a few other places. I write a post for AdAge about the perils of cloud storage, and lessons learned from it.

Finally, after a few days of Tweets, Tumble posts, and updates this blog, which was read a few times by people from Rochester, NY (Kodak’s headquarters), and one last tweet for comment, I get a Tweet from Mr Hayzlett saying that the team was trying to reach me. Kodak was listening.

The next day, I received an email from Kodak’s Public Relations team, trying to understand my story, and learn a litle bit more about my situation, and expressed a bit of confusion about the misunderstanding of Kodak’s purchase requirement (apparently it has been in place for 5 years). I tell her my situation, how there’s no way for me to get photos out, and how this is a major miss for Kodak, and how the communication was clear as to purpose, but it was perhaps a little blunt and unforgiving. She asked me why Flickr was willing to be worth my $24.95 a year, but Kodak was not. She also said Kodak was “working on” the solution of bulk downloads, and actually recommended a Firefox plugin as a stopgap solution.

And, most importantly, they RESTORED my missing photos for another year, and gave me an invite to and a credit to test their new beta product, because they want to continue to hear my feedback.

Huh. They listened, and they want to listen more.

And for those who have had their photos deleted:

“In terms of people who have not complied with the Terms of Service and have not made a purchase, they may be able to get their images restored. They would need to contact Gallery customer service, bring their account current by meeting the purchase requirement and then images may be restored.”

Today, at The 140 Characters (#140conf), Jeffrey Hayzlett, Kodak’s Chief Marketing Officer, and moderately active Twitterer, announced that Kodak was hiring a “Chief Listening Officer” as a part of Kodak’s continued push into digital.

And I can honestly say, after this experience, that Kodak is trying to listen and responding. Even though the solution wasn’t ideal, they tried to offer one that worked for me. And while I’d still like to see Kodak’s solution for “bulk downloads”, so that in a year’s time, this sort of thing doesn’t happen again for me, I think at least trying to offer an alternative was a good gesture. I’d say that Kodak’s listening has turned #kodakfail into at least a #kodakmulligan, or #kodaktryagain. There are still a lot of other brands who think the old way, that would have never even considered my situation.

They’re listening. And they’re trying, and I think that’s really all I could have ever asked.

Many thanks to the hundreds of people who shared my story to help get Kodak’s ear. The customer is always right, and now with social tools, “right” three times as fast, and three levels closer to the brand.

NY Social Media Roundtable Post-Game

Interview w/ Matthew Knell, co-founder Social Media For Social Change

Posted to Internet Week by shiralazar on June 05, 2009

Click to Play | View Details

Yesterday I had the opportunity to set on an amazing panel representing Social Media for Social Change at the first New York Social Media Roundtable event, put on by Flightpath and hosted by Kate Miltner. I was on an amazing panel featuring Rachel Sklar of Chartini, Alison Palmer of The Center, and Soraya Dorabi of Goods4Good. Matt Caldecutt’s write-up is here but Alice Hunt’s write up of the event itself seems to be the most complete and is available here (she corrected my name from Knoll to Knell in a follow-up post). Also, check out the Twitter hashtag for the event for other audience reaction.  Thanks to everyone who made the event possible.

After the event was over, I had a chance to briefly catch up with video blogger extraordinaire Shira Lazar about the event and SM4SC for the Internet Week NY website. Hope you enjoy.

It’s unanimous… Kodak hasn’t handled this well

I had a great opportunity to talk about Twitter Customer Service and Brand Experience at the expertedly organized and amazing BarCampNYC 4, and I found a captive audience for my Kodak story. What’s remarkable to me is that the room was filled with many of NY’s tech elite, the core audience of what Kodak would aim to reach with products like the Zi6 and Zx1, and savvy web consumers, of which the number will only grow. The days of transparency have arrived for good now, and the room agreed that Kodak’s actions were a total fail.   The session was lively and had a lot of great dialogue about brands that are getting it RIGHT, and what consumers are expecting to see going forward from brands on Twitter and in social media.  Many, many thanks to the 20-30 people who took time to be a part of the discussion, and to Frederic Guarino for playing Qik cameraman with his phone.

Note: After this video, I learned that Kodak had indeed deleted all 3000 of my photos from storage. Classy move, Kodak. I don’t think you’ve heard the last of this.

Dear Kodak…. Stop holding my pictures hostage

Update: 6/16/2009 - Read my summary post of the results and final observations.
Update: 6/15/2009 - I wrote a piece about my experience for Advertising Age’s DigitalNext blog.
Update: 6/15/2009 - My photos have been restored! Kodak PR rep says Kodak is “still working” on the bulk storage problem and recommends this as a way to grab my photos.
Update: 6/2/2009 - This story has been featured in a Consumerist blog post, which I have to say, has the best feedback and comments about the issue so far.
Update: 6/1/2009 - My story has new been featured in a post on a econsultancy.com called “Kodak risks major PR fail after purge of the free” - read it here.
Update: 5/31/2009 - Kodak has deleted all 3000 of my photos. See reactions from my story from people gathered at BarCampNYC4 here.

Once upon a time, we were buds. Back when I first had a digital camera in the late 1990s (an Olympus 360L, with a whopping 1.3MP picture depth, that cost me $299) I, like everyone else with a digital camera, needed somewhere to store them.  On the recommendation of my brother, I tried out a little photo sharing site called Ofoto, which had the novel idea printing your digital prints on good old-fashioned photo paper for just 29 cents each.  No longer would I have to develop dozens of meaningless prints to find the ones that I wanted (I was also sporting an Kodak Advantix camera at the time, and the ability to do “HD” style prints was exciting enough, but the One Hour Photo bills ran to $19-24 dollars - for a bunch of pictures that I didn’t really want), I could just pick the prints I wanted, and they were delivered to me in record time (I seem to remember Ofoto’s penchant for delivering photos in record time - usually no more than 2 days after I ordered them with standard shipping).  And the best part, I could store as many photos as I wanted for as long as I needed to - indexed, put into sets, and shareable with friends who sometimes even bought prints of their own.   This was well before I was aware of Flickr, and before web storage was cheap and flexible.   But I figured it was a good compromise.  I begged off flirtations with Snapfish (later bought by HP) and didn’t really care much for any of the other alternatives.

Fast forward a year or two, and Kodak purchases Ofoto, and I figured, well, this is great, because it means my little Ofoto shop won’t go out of business.  And so it went.  More photos uploaded, more sets created, more memories shared.    I built up a library of nearly 3,000 pictures there.  All sorts of occasions - weddings, parties, softball games, vacations - the usual sorts of stuff that builds up over 5 or 6 years especially when digital images are easy and cheap to create.

Around 2006, I found the now “Kodak Picture Gallery” to be behind the times in it’s abilities to share and show my photos - and I weighed Flickr (bought by Yahoo) and Picasa (bought by Google) against each other in the battle for the place to store my photos, and finally last year, I upgraded to a Flickr pro account.   But I never worried about my “Ofoto” pictures - they were still there, and I’d have time to start to migrate them later.

And then I got this e-mail.  Let’s break down my favorite marketing speak from the e-mail:

“It’s long been our policy that Gallery customers make an annual purchase in exchange for unlimited photo storage and sharing. However, without a minimum defined purchase amount, some customers have ended up spending as little as 15¢. The result: Our loyal customers who regularly shop the Gallery have essentially been subsidizing those who don’t.”

Really? Then how come as a customer since 1999, I’d never once heard of this policy.  It had never been communicated to me once - until I got this nastygram with big red letters about how you were going to delete my photos.   I’m a loyal customer, recommended you to friends, and the fact that my photos were still there should TELL you that.  Loyalty isn’t always the amount of purchases I make in a given year - it’s also that fact that I’ve bothered to stick around so long. (Also, I’m happy to return the Kodak Zi6 that I’ve raved about for months, in the backwash of the Flip MinoHD launch, which I got as a birthday present, and got at least two other people to buy as a result. I thought it was a game changer for Kodak, a product that finally got it right. Guess I’m not loyal, huh?. But I digress.)

Fine. If the “problem” that Kodak is trying to address is the fact that I’m a cheapskate and “loyal” people who use the service more than I do, I’m happy to move my photos off your service and give the space back to “loyal” people.

So, now, my thoughts are, “My pictures may be deleted? Seriously? Why? Ok. Well, obviously, I don’t want that. So what are my options?”.

I did a little digging. I discovered that there are three options to get my full-resolution photos back:

• I can download full-resolution photos for all of my pictures for free. I do enjoy the marketing spin, dripping with irony, on the help item for this:
  

  “Get FREE high-resolution downloads of all your digitized photos—anytime, anywhere—a benefit no other company offers for free. Because your photos are yours, you can trust us to stay out of the way of you using them however you see fit.”

  Oh really? Whew. Well, I’ve only got about 25 sets of photos, this seems like a few hours of work tops. So how do I download albums of high-res photos. Well, apparently, you can’t.

  “Currently, you cannot download an entire album of your original high-resolution images at once. You can only download original high-resolution images, one photo at a time.”

  The bold face is quoted from the help item. Ok. I have 3000 pictures stored there. There’s no way I’m doing this one at a time. That could literally be days of effort. What are my other options?

• I can buy an archive CD. Ok, fine. Just to be done with this, I’m debating actually PAYING for my photos held hostage. How much could the CD possibly be? Well, it turns out, a lot.

$70 BUCKS? You can’t be serious. So, again, you’re charging me $70 to allow me to archive my photos that I’ve stored with you.

• I can pay the $19.99 storage fee for another year out of fear of losing my photos. Which, frankly, after the options you’ve offered for me before, just isn’t a viable option now. I’ve build definite brand disillusionment after this whole experience, and I’m not going to give you any of my money.

So, Kodak, are you serious? I have 3000 photos and now you’re telling me the only out I have for free is to download them all ONE AT A TIME? This is bush league. I’d be perfectly content to give your storage back and never give you another penny of my money if you gave me a legitimate option. But now I’m left to wonder, is this the example you want to set in a world powered by user-generated content? For a company trying hard to reinvent themselves in the digital age? In an environment where you’re losing market share to newer, nimbler and smarter companies? To be the one to put doubt in customers’ minds about storing things in the “cloud”?

The choice is yours, Kodak. And I know, with this issue, I’m not alone.

Update: Some selected tweets of people who are as frustrated as I am….

“kodak (ofoto gallery) deleted photos of my life I had for the last 15 years. They win biggest online asshole award.” - @jaztuck
“Kodak Gallery (ofoto) wants $19.99 or its going to erase all of my images. Nice welcome back. Fail.” - @gillee
“hey kodak gallery…suck it. I’ve deleted you before you can delete me. My photos now live on Picasa, I’m sure I’ve ruined your day.” - @RoseBirdLA
“Is Extortion good for customer service? Kodak seems to think so. They have threatened to delete my photos unless I spend some $$$ soon!” - @jrork
“Just paid ransom to keep old digital photos alive in Kodak Gallery after their threat to delete. They really suck now.” - @prmolly
“Amazing in a world that’s approaching free storage that Kodak Gallery is telling me I have to spend $ w them or they’ll delete my photos.” - @jonbischke
“#Kodak new policy: must spend $20/yr or they delete online photos. Not customer-oriented policy. #Fail pls RT” - @christinepilch

Updated (6/2/2009): More feedback driven by the Consumerist article:

“@terilg I had film fotos on kodak gallery w no other digi copy. Paid $30+ 4 archival disks when I got deletion email and am done with kodak” - @manamica
“What can go wrong when a company abandons freemium business model? Kodak is feeling the backlash. http://budurl.com/2zv5 - @daveyarmon
“Warning: Kodak Photogallery (formerly Ofoto) deleting photos if no recent purchases. They deleted several thousand of mine without warning” - @mchesner
“Unbelievable. RT @consumerist Kodak Gallery Holds Photos Hostage, Then Deletes Them [Online Photo Sites] http://tinyurl.com/mubqtm” - @terlig
“Kodak pr fail - alienation of users” - @jennibeattie
“this would irk not at all if I hadn’t written a paper on how Kodak should be more like Flickr: http://bit.ly/LrJMt from @econsultancy” - @sabina_vs_world
“RT @Econsultancy Kodak risks major PR fail after purge of free http://bit.ly/LrJMtThe end of free love? (my blog 4/20) http://bit.ly/157xh0 - @ddudgeon

And a fast growing list of unhappy consumers feeling cheated

And the Kodak response to date (updated on 5/29/2009):
From @jeffreyhayzlett, Kodak Chief Marketing Officer
From @kodakCB, Jennifer Cisney, Kodak’s Chief Blogger

My Tweets to the Kodak Twitterers:
To @kodakCB and @jeffreyhayzlett
To @kodakCB only
To @jeffreyhayzlett