I stopped by NBC's Studio 8h, historic home of Saturday Night Live, for Kodak's Press Event announcing their new line of EasyShare Printers. To get the formalities out of the way, Kodak will debut three EasyShare printers—available exclusively at Best Buy for three months beginning in March--starting at $149.99. The printers themselves are pretty ably equipped with one touch synchronization, Bluetooth, built-in scanning and faxing and host of other features, but the real draw will likely be the cost of ink. In addition to the printers, Kodak will offer inexpensive ink packages capable of producing hundreds of lab quality or better photos starting at $9.99.

To deliver all this news Kodak, showing at least some measure of Internet savvy, developed a viral ad campaign called inkisit where two sycophantic boobs gush over Kodak CEO and Chairman Antonio Perez. The viral ad itself was shot in the wrapper of a Saturday Night Live broadcast, undoubtedly to replicate the viral success of Lazy Sunday. Joining in the festivities were SNL Alumnus Molly Shannon and musical guest The Nerds, a Weezer/Buddy Holly-esque cover band.

On it's face, the Kodak event was an over-elaborate power-point presentation meant to generate buzz over the fortune spent on production. More significantly, however, the event represented the lustful eye that corporations have cast on the viral phenomenon. The idea of millions of eyes focused on a silly two-minute clip is enough to make marketers cream themselves. Thankfully, no one marketing team has figured out how to duplicate the phenomenon and hopefully no one ever will. The public consciousness is far too fickle to track and pinpoint and so we likely will never see multiple viral videos from the same source. Then again people still watch the Real World, so what the fuck do I know.

Anyways, the main thrust of the skit--illustrated by posters with taglines like "revolutionary," "inexpensive" and "empower the consumer"— was that printing companies have been gouging customers with costly ink cartridges for years despite inexpensive printers. As Mrs. Shannon so eloquently put it, "The printers are often stacked in a pile while the ink is locked up tight." And she's right, ink has been ridiculously expensive since time immemorial. What's changed, said Perez, is that the computer chip typically found on each ink cartridge has been integrated into the new EasyShare printers, effectively allowing Kodak to offer ink that is cheaper by half. Wow, and it only took them twenty years. The mind reels.


Now following this example, if consumers have been getting hosed by ink costs for years is half-off really the best Kodak can do? Even more dubious is Kodak's exclusivity deal with Best Buy. Despite claims of Empowering the Consumer™, Kodak and Best Buy have effectively diminished the consumer's buying power by disallowing competition. I brought up this point to Best Buy's Senior Vice President (and Molly Shannon's costar for the morning) Dave Morrish who offered a lukewarm response: since Best Buy has made a tremendous mark in retail electronics the product will achieve greater visibility through their exclusive deal. Sounds to me like they're empowering themselves, not the consumer.

As good as the printer was, and it really was impressive, and as cheap as the ink seems, after years of being hosed by inflated ink prices half price just seems like a gimmick designed sell new printers. Personally, I'm going to hold out for a rebate for all those ink cartridges I went through in college and a personalized letter of apology from Antonio Perez.

Naturally, I won' be holding my breath.

The aforementioned sycophantic boobs:


Musical Guest The Nerds who probably make way too much money doing corporate gigs:
NEEEEERDS!