Kodak PowerPoint Presentation Is No Digital Delight

Using a PowerPoint presentation to explain your Chapter 11 insolvency protection might not be the first thing you’d expect Eastman Kodak to do. Yet, the once omnipresent face of photography, did just that last week. Because they’ve now filed for bankruptcy protection in the US courts. The investor relations team–who prepared the Kodak PowerPoint presentation—has been very busy of late.

The Kodak PowerPoint presentation sets out the context of the dramatic fall in the fortunes of Kodak. So we can see the digital onslaught and their expectations for eventual restructuring. That’s no tall order for any presentation. So it comes as no surprise that the presentation doesn’t deliver.

From the very first slide you sense that their material would be more useful in a report format. There’s too much text and, importantly, font sizes are too small. Additionally, there’s too little emphasis upon the imagery with which Kodak made its name. You’d expect some use of imagery, photography, pictures within a Kodak PowerPoint presentation!

Bullet Points Everywhere In This Kodak PowerPoint

The Kodak team has built too many bullet point lists. And they have placed several financial performance graphs together onto individual slides. This clearly means that you can’t fathom out what’s happening.

They have also put too much text on their slides. You can see this most obviously with the slides dedicated to financial transactions and cash-flow. But, Kodak isn’t alone for this problem Since we come across it again and again, such as this Barclays results presentation.

This was a disappointing presentation from the former masters of creative imagery. In essence, the job of serving this amount of information to shareholders would be better done with something other than a presentation. Perhaps this simple shortcoming in their application of imagery and the visual arts is a pointer to their demise in the digital age.

Kodak PowerPoint Presentation: 2014 Update

The team at Kodak has now re-structured their business. Thus, all their old presentations have gone the way of the old consumer film business. Because they are now focused on business to business markets and products. However, the evidence from their investor relations website suggests that their approach to PowerPoint presentations hasn’t changed.