Rob Reuter

By Rob Reuter, YPN Manager

Starting this month, Kodak and YPN will begin a unique year-long sponsorship with high hopes of continuing this relationship into the future.  Along with the traditional sponsorship perks, Kodak will be holding quarterly contests where you can win some of their hot new products.  There will all so be a “Powered by Kodak” feature in the YPN newsletter that will cover various topics.  Finally, I had a chance to interview the Kodak team on what they hope to accomplish with this sponsorship this year:

Kodak seems to really have focused quite a bit on real estate this year even in a down market.  Why the focus this year?

Kodak Team: The challenges that a down market brings means that for a REALTOR® it is more important than ever to do a great job marketing and to save money at the same time.   Kodak is committed to helping real estate professionals do just that.  We are proud to offer real estate professionals great tools for their business at great prices, something that is hard to find these days.

Young professional real estate agents represent a small population of the entire REALTOR® family.  Is there a reason you want specifically to get in front of this group?

Kodak Team: YPN represents the future of real estate, and we want to be a part of that future.  As a technology company we want to be connected with the people most likely to adopt our products first, and young professionals tend to be early adopters.   Your members are on the cutting edge of technology, and REALTORS® of all ages look to YPNers to see the latest tools for real estate in action.  Also, we learn a lot about new and creative ways to use our products from groups like YPN.

When discussing the possible sponsorship of YPN nationally, you wanted to take a more creative approach.  Can you expand on that a little and tell us why you think this is a better approach versus a more traditional sponsorship?

Kodak Team: When Kodak made the decision to invest major time and effort marketing into the real estate population, we realized that in order for anyone to really take notice we were going to have to do something different – something that would allow us to stand out over the barrage of marketing and advertising aimed at REALTORS®. Over the course of the year YPNers should look for lots of fun stuff from Kodak, including some great contest and our participation in some great YPN events.

What are one or two of your hottest products that real estate agents are using and why do you think these particular products are attracting so much attention?

Kodak Team: Our two hottest products right now with real estate agents are the Playtouch Pocket Video Camera and our ESP 6150 All in One Printer, hands down.

Video is really on everyone’s mind these days as the next great marketing frontier, and the Playtouch is a fantastic tool for taking advantage of video in your marketing mix.  The ability to shoot in true 1080p High Definition and to add an external microphone for stereo sound really make this the complete solution.   And with the touch screen technology, it could not be any easier to use.

Our 6150 printer is hot because it provides for a very low cost in terms of ink replacement.   Everyone is looking to save money but we all still need to market ourselves well.  This printer allows an agent to do both – with low ink costs and high quality prints it just can’t be beat!

Are there any existing Kodak products you feel aren’t getting the attention they deserve or are there any new products being released that you feel will be the next hot item?

Kodak Team: We have a couple of current products that I see having awesome application for real estate, but which tend to get overlooked at times as people focus on our cameras and printers.

Our ScanMate scanner is a great tool to have on your desk, especially in this day and age with banks requiring REO paperwork be digitized.   You can scan your contracts in seconds and email them straight to the bank or your client with the touch of a button.

The other product is our Pulse digital photo frame.   The really cool thing about this frame as opposed to all of the others out there is that it is Wi-Fi enabled and has its own email address, so you can send photos to the frame from anywhere at any time.   Imagine the applications!   It makes a great closing gift and allows you to stay in touch with your clients year-round via photos.

To learn about these and other great products from Kodak with our special YPN real estate pricing, visit this website:   www.kodak.com/go/redeal