The Branding of Polaroid, 1957 - 1977

Guru Phil Baker in The Atlantic: "Under Dr. Land any innovation that didn't come from him was discouraged."

Finally, something current worth reading.

Dated 25 January 2011 from The Atlantic magazine

The article is entitled "What's Next for Apple?" but it relates to Polaroid's Land as well as Apple's Steve Jobs, and it's by someone knowledgeable who worked for both Polaroid and Apple.

   

Phil Baker, writing in James Fallows' slot in the Atlantic had this perceptive comment on what it was like to work at Polaroid under the leadership of Edwin Land:

". . .  when Land left the company, it began to disintegrate because there was a sudden lack of strong leadership. Under Dr. Land any innovation that didn't come from him was discouraged. In fact, when he learned that one of his engineers was designing an improvement for the SX-70 camera, he threatened to fire him. (That engineer was me; in the end we shared the patent on that invention)."

The entire article can be found at: 

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/01/whats-next-for-apple/70095/

Baker is the author of From Concept to Consumer, 2008, FT Press.

The Unbranding of Polaroid: All the News Unfit to Print

I remember the late, great columnist David Nyhan of the Boston Globe speaking at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard about the future of newspapers. He predicted that the big ones would survive along the Northeast corridor, and all the rest of print would be only trade journals. Never has this been more obvious than now, with prattle from those covering the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which seems to be nothing more than copying and pasting press releases from the new Polaroid Corporation.

Please notice the only color appearing on these product designs. It's the mark of the Zink Corporation. Zink signifies the fact that the printer uses zero ink. 
 

It's also apparent that the mechanism of the printer is installed in the camera shown above it, just the way you would install an extra hard drive in your computer. The printer will actually print a 3 x 4 inch photo, as was seen when Lady Gaga activated it with bluetooth technology from her cell phone camera.

But -- where were the photos created by the much heralded new Polaroid L30 camera shown above it? Or the heavy and ungainly sunglasses that were also supposed to create Polaroid photos?

More to the point -- where were the media cheerleaders who surely must have noticed the lack of empirical proof that two of the three products apparently weren't working. There is after all, a huge difference between a dummy, and a working dummy. No pun intended.

George Orwell's 1984 was 27 years ahead of its time. Group Think and Word Noise are here, and flourishing.

Images courtesy Polaroid Corporation.

The Unbranding of Polaroid: Where's the beef?

You couldn't write cheap fiction better than this:

Las Vegas, 6 January 2011, the biggest consumer electronics show you can imagine. 

Polaroid, a familiar name in photography formerly led by a famous and distinguished American scientist, later bankrupted by unscrupulous businessmen, bought up by a company which specialized in foreclosures, then rents its name for license fees, jumps back into the photo business, hires a trendy singer as creative director, books this show, hypes its products, then sends off its CEO in high-top Keds and a scarf with the singer and songwriter to introduce the products covered in wrinkled rags on a cheezy set -- and, get this, only one of the products gets a demo. It prints a photo taken by a cell phone, and not even an iPhoto, because that won't work with this equipment. 

Obviously, this isn't your grandfather's Polaroid. This grandfather is offended by Unlady Gaga's use of four letter words while introducing the products. What kind of message does this send to her audience of children? 

What does this say about Polaroid's top management? Except for Bobby Sager, a published photographer as well as philanthropist, do the others understand photography? Do they understand trade shows? Two of the three products were not demonstrated taking a photo. 

Where's the beef? Better yet, where were the photos?

For another take, click on this link by perceptive tech writer Mic Wright of London UK.

Images courtesy Polaroid Corporation.

The Unbranding of Polaroid: Bobby Sager & Lady Gaga at Vegas

This morning you can see the entire presentation at http://www.polaroid.com/en/stream so I'll just include some stills. 

CEO Bobby Sager and Lady Gaga opening at the CES, Vegas, 6 January 2011

Gaga's sunglasses which also take photos

Gaga taking a photo of the audience with her non-Polaroid camera phone.

She's saying, "Smile, you're so f**king famous." What? [How long will it take to remove that from the video?]

When they got around to taking the wraps off the much hyped GL30 camera,

Gaga says to Bobby, "Ooh, don't drop it!"

After twelve mostly awkward minutes, Gaga wraps with "I guess we're done."

During the 45 minute wait from 6:30 to 7:15 PM (EST) there were comments from viewers all over the globe. I caught a few in English:

"WTF?" There were many of these.

"All I hear is ugly elevator music"

"This is BS"

"LOL"

And, of course, "Hurry up"

Now let's look at the products --

This was the only product that was demonstrated. It spit out a color photo taken with Gaga's non-Polaroid camera phone. She explained that it would not work with an iPhone.

These are the sunglasses that were promised to take photos. They were not demonstrated.

This is the camera that all the prior tease was about. It was not demonstrated. The promised date was end of this year in time for Christmas. No mention of price. From a design point of view, it has the grace and beauty of an old Ford tri motor prop plane of the late 1920s.

Yes, I will admit to being an old curmudgeon, but I knew Edwin Land and Bill McCune, and somehow I can't imagine them in such a situation. Nor would they have tolerated such language from Gaga, who thanked Polaroid for letting her "design this sh*t myself."

In my 28 years of being involved with the real Polaroid, I can't imagine Land or McCune signing off on an important introduction such as this with two new products that weren't operative.

But this is now and that was Vegas.

Images courtesy Polaroid Corporation.

More Polaroid Color Stripes from the Kennedy Center

Scroll down to my earlier comments regarding this design aberration.

Sorry, Alec Baldwin. I feel sure you had nothing to do with this.