Kodak fits gays and Mykonos into the picture August 31, 2005 The gay and lesbian market has developed such that Eastman Kodak Co. has brought them into the advertising picture. Literally. The company, which popularized film and photography for the masses in the 1920s, has introduced a new campaign featuring gay-specific ads to run in LPI publications. The ads focus on the EasyShare camera line and printer dock. Each shows an image of people in the lens finder and printed photo. While most of the ads feature three women who could be friends, one portrays two men in a romantic embrace. Created by Ogilvy & Mather, the campaign's taglines include Girls night out, Share a joke (while they're still laughing) and Digital. Simple. Fabulous. While the company has been tiptoeing into the market for some time, with a trickle of ads supporting diversity and products in 1998, and again in 2002 and 2003, this spring marks the first continuous branding effort. The new ads will be tracked for brand and product awareness, as well as purchase intent, afterward. It will be tied to how much we invest later, so we can move the needle, says Greg Walker, Kodak's director-VP for brand and market development and multicultural marketing. From a creative standpoint, the gay theme to the ads works within the overall corporate campaign, says Walker. We are being as appropriately targeted to the audience as you can be. So why specifically target gay photographers? What makes them different? We don't view the act of picture-taking as being driven by sexual orientation. But the gay market is much more developed in digital photography, they're online more, and they travel a lot, explains Walker. In other words, gays own more digital cameras. They take more pictures on more vacations. And more online familiarity means more digital sharing and printing of pictures from those trips to Ibiza, Mykonos and Phuket. Author : by Michael Wilke, Commercial Closet