'Creative Workflow Management' Drives Efficiencies in Branding and Packaging Production

NEW YORK—July 13, 2009—Intense time-to-market pressures, tightened production budgets and high regulatory hurdles are all conspiring to make things difficult for creative teams linked to the brand management, packaging and marketing functions.

But a new approach, leveraging both technology and process management, has emerged that offers the potential to drive substantial value throughout the creative production process, harmonizing the day-today work of brand execution with upstream “product lifecycle management” (PLM) efforts focused on organizational efficiency. That’s the finding of a new white paper released this morning by Winterberry Group, a leading New York-based strategic consulting firm serving the advertising and marketing industries.

Sponsored by Kodak, the white paper, entitled "Creative Workflow Management: Bringing Science to the Art of Brand Execution," explores the very significant opportunities now emerging around creative workflow management (CWM)—the dedicated set of tools and processes designed to optimize the development of creative elements and associated data through the product development cycle.

The paper explores both the leading drivers of CWM adoption, as well as the factors that are expected to support continued expansion of the practice—especially in conjunction with the PLM approach—over the coming years. Among other findings, it concludes that:

• CWM has emerged as a primary approach for brand and packaging managers to improve operational efficiencies, relieve stresses on the supply chain, reduce design costs and shorten time-to-market cycles

• CWM solutions serve as a bridge to existing PLM tools, enhancing platform functionality and mitigating the need for parallel systems and complicated system integrations

• CWM allows creative production teams to engender a range of efficient new processes through the definition (and subsequent optimization) of those discrete production workflows required for its implementation

• CWM facilitates real-time collaboration among team members, allowing global brands to gain upfront buy-in across languages and geographies, streamlining the approvals process and minimizing the risk of errors

Brand and Design “Art” Meets Production “Science”—and Dramatic Efficiencies Result—Via New Creative Execution Discipline

• CWM applications can serve as a de facto institutional memory, cataloging creative collateral across channels and establishing a “single source of truth” (or “system of record”) that allows for the redeployment of creative content and reconciles challenges associated with synchronization of product launches and uniformity across media.

“As large, product-focused companies concern themselves increasingly with challenges related to organizational efficiency, it’s critical that they embrace tools and processes that put macro strategy into practice at the operational level,” said Jonathan Margulies, a director at Winterberry Group. “Our research has revealed that when it comes to the creative-focused disciplines—including brand management, packaging and marketing execution—CWM offers significant potential for both cost savings and improved time-to-market performance, as well as better overall quality throughout the creative execution process.”

“Kodak is proud to sponsor this important work,” added Alison Malloy of Kodak’s Marketing Workflow Solutions Group. “The findings brought forth in the research build awareness about creative workflow management for brands searching for more effective ways to market better, faster and more creatively to realize near instantaneous return on investment.”

Creative Workflow Management: Bringing Science to the Art of Brand Execution is available for complimentary download via the Our Insights page of Winterberry Group’s Web site (located at www.winterberrygroup.com/ourinsights) as well as via Kodak’s marketing automation homepage (located at www.automation.kodak.com).

About Winterberry Group
Winterberry Group is a unique strategic consulting firm that helps advertising and marketing industry companies grow shareholder value. The Firm’s services include corporate strategy—including business analysis, strategic development and targeted buy-side execution—plus market intelligence and merger-and-acquisition transaction support. Its global stable of clients includes service providers, marketers and financial investors representing every segment of the advertising and marketing industries. Over the last seven years, it has successfully provided advanced strategic counsel to over 150 of the these companies, including Acxiom Corporation, Alterian plc, American Capital Strategies, Ltd., Apax Partners, arvato Services (the marketing services division of Bertlesmann AG), Canada Post Corporation, Capital One Financial Corp., The Carlyle Group, Cox Target Media, Hewlett-Packard Co., ICOM Information & Communications, Inc., KRG Capital, MediMedia USA, Rosetta, Transcontinental, Inc. and Yahoo!.

Winterberry Group’s impact is further enhanced through its affiliation with Petsky Prunier LLC, a leading investment bank providing merger-and-acquisition advisory services to companies in the direct marketing, marketing services & technology, advertising & promotion and information industries.

Working in close collaboration, the two firms offer a unique dual perspective on corporate growth grounded in market knowledge, value assessment and strategic insight.

For more information about Winterberry Group, please visit www.winterberrygroup.com.

About Kodak
Kodak is the world’s foremost imaging innovator, providing leading products and services to the photographic and graphic communications markets. With sales of $10.3 billion in 2008, the company is committed to a digitally oriented growth strategy focused on helping people better use meaningful images and information in their life and work.

Kodak’s Marketing Workflow Solutions offer a powerful workflow solution for content management of Brand and Packaging Assets to maximize efficiency, supply chain and information sharing within and across their enterprise. Simplify the global execution and marketing process by enhancing productivity and increasing speed to market with Kodak Design2Launch Solutions. Kodak’s comprehensive products fully integrate planning, analyzing, measuring, designing, executing, and managing Enterprise Marketing with ease. The result is more automation, effectiveness, accountability and efficiency across the entire packaging and marketing supply chain.

More information about Kodak (NYSE: EK) is available at www.kodak.com. For more Information about Kodak Enterprise Solutions, please visit www.automation.kodak.com