Brand Failures

274 Brand failures
93 Polaroid
Live by the category, die by the category
If digital photography represents a difficult challenge for Kodak, it represented
a near impossible one for Polaroid. In October 2001, after years of
falling sales and drastic cost cuts, the firm filed for bankruptcy. Although the
company was eventually purchased in July 2002 by the private equity arm
of Bank One, many believe the glory days of Polaroid are in the past.
However, digital cameras are only one contributing factor in the perceived
decline of the instant photography brand. To understand how it was unable
to maintain its once formidably strong brand assets, it is necessary to
understand how the brand evolved.
Polaroid was founded by Harvard graduate Edwin Land in 1937, who had
spent years researching ways to reduce the problem of glare within photographs.
Indeed, early Polaroid products included glare-reducing desk lamps
and eye glasses.
In the years after World War II, Polaroid became chiefly associated with
instant photography. Land, who had pioneered a process in which coloured
dyes were able to be passed from a negative onto film inside a sealed unit,
launched his first camera in 1948 and by the 1970s the brand was a household
name. In fact, as the first and only brand within its category, the brand
became the name of the end product itself. In other words, people didn’t say
‘a Polaroid photograph’ or even ‘a photograph’, they simply said ‘a Polaroid’.
Polaroid’s profile was enhanced further during the 1970s through the longrunning
advertising campaign for the company’s One Step camera, featuring