Let's look back at the 1980's and one of the most successful campaigns of that decade...
The 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Sponsorship and the opportunities that followed were the chance of a lifetime for FUJIFILM, and their agency Geers Gross Advertising. It represented an opportunity to increase the company's brand awareness and marketshare globally using the Olympics as a springboard.
However, this is less than four decades after World War Two and FUJIFILM was a quarter of the size of the market leader in photographic film, US giant EASTMAN KODAK. The global ad campaign that followed was titled 'the words most developed film'. It featured two Japanese children, one a smartly dressed young boy (the photographer) taking photos of a similarly young girl dressed in a traditional kimono. The simplicity of the execution combined with the brilliant casting of the two young actors proved to be a masterstroke. The result was a campaign that made light of stereotypes and appealed to the domestic US audience in a way that their main competitors (EASTMAN KODAK) never could.
Suddenly, coming from a different culture wasn't a disadvantage. People in countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, Great Britain loved the campaign and embraced FUJIFILM as their manufacturer of choice for photographic film and processing. Global photographic film sales peaked in 2001 and since then digital imaging has taken over.
Fast-forward to today, EASTMAN KODAK continues to trade but is a shadow of its former self,
whereas FUJIFILM’s long-term vision drove them to make large scale investments in digital technologies that continue propel the brand to this day.
Alan Macdonald