Polaroid

Polaroid

Polaroid was the Apple of its day, inno­v­a­tive and cool.  But by the time BBDO got the account the brand was, ahem, fad­ing. Although their mar­gins were great (the film cost con­sumers $1 a shot), instant pic­tures had lost their mag­ic. Not only were they try­ing to recap­ture their glo­ry days, but Polaroid was fight­ing a hos­tile $2.5 bil­lion takeover bid by Roy Disney.

I began work­ing on the brand after sales had slumped 10% the pre­vi­ous year. We sought to repo­si­tion Polaroid as a total imag­ing com­pa­ny. This was a major shift away from new cam­era or film launch­es to focus­ing on a broad range of uses for instant photography.

“Before It’s a Memory”

We devel­oped the cam­paign Before It’s a Mem­o­ry, It’s Polaroid. (The orig­i­nal line was “Before It’s a Mem­o­ry, It’s a Polaroid,” which their attor­neys object­ed to. So, like Neil Arm­strong in 1969, we lost an impor­tant “a.” As the com­pa­ny with­ered, how­ev­er, “Before It’s a Mem­o­ry” took on a total­ly dif­fer­ent meaning.)

Our four exe­cu­tions showed emo­tion­al and prac­ti­cal sit­u­a­tions for instant pho­tog­ra­phy, from sono­grams to fash­ion design to celebri­ty autographs—not the usu­al fare of birth­day par­ties and pup­pies. Polaroid put $20 mil­lion behind the cam­paign, which won a Best of New York ADDY and awards from Art Direc­tion and Creativity.

“Noth­ing Works Like Polaroid”

While “Before It’s a Mem­o­ry” increased sales, new sur­veys revealed that Polaroid cam­eras were used increas­ing­ly for prac­ti­cal rea­sons in real estate, shop­ping, insur­ance, film pro­duc­tion and oth­er busi­ness­es. (In Japan, about 70% of Polaroid use was non-recreational.)

We devel­oped a new cam­paign, “Noth­ing Works Like Polaroid,” and pro­mot­ed the instant cam­era as a tool. Polaroid com­bined pre­vi­ous­ly sep­a­rate bud­gets for busi­ness, con­sumer and deal­er mar­ket­ing and  spent $40 mil­lion on the campaign.

We cre­at­ed two spots that showed prac­ti­cal uses that had emo­tion­al benefits:

Polaroid | “Family Tree”

This spot was ref­er­enced in the film Sleep­less in Seat­tle:

Polaroid | “Clues”

This cam­paign helped Polaroid reach record rev­enues of $3 bil­lion. But the world of pho­tog­ra­phy soon changed with new tech­nolo­gies: one-hour col­or film pro­cess­ing, sin­gle-use cam­eras, cam­corders, and dig­i­tal cameras.

BBDO resigned Polaroid to pur­sue a glob­al assign­ment from Kodak, but Kodak went to Ogilvy. Polaroid relo­cat­ed to Good­by Sil­ver­stein & Part­ners. The orig­i­nal Polaroid Cor­po­ra­tion declared bank­rupt­cy, and its brand and assets were sold off. A “new” Polaroid formed, but decid­ed in 2008 to dis­con­tin­ue instant film.

Enthu­si­asts still cher­ish Polaroids over oth­er ana­log and dig­i­tal for­mats. (Insta­gram and sim­i­lar dig­i­tal-pho­to tools helped re-pop­u­lar­ize the Polaroid aes­thet­ic.) A wealthy devo­tee bought Polaroid’s pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties and set out to man­u­fac­ture new film for old cam­eras with an entire­ly new for­mu­la for self-devel­op­ing prints.