John Reinan: The death of a business legend (not Steve Jobs)

John Reinan is senior director at the Minneapolis marketing agency Fast Horse.

The big news last week was the death of Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs. Because the immense legacy of Jobs sucked all the oxygen out of the room, the looming death of another great American technology icon got little attention.

But I noticed, because for a few years in the mid-1990s I was a newspaper reporter in Rochester, N.Y. — the home of Eastman Kodak.

More than a century ago, Kodak was a company as revolutionary as Apple is today, in its technology as well as its marketing. Before Kodak, photography was a messy and physically taxing activity requiring special expertise.

Kodak’s founder, George Eastman, developed celluloid roll film that replaced the glass negatives then in use.

But his real genius was in marketing.  Kodak cameras came pre-loaded with enough film for 100 pictures. When you used them up, you mailed the entire camera back to the factory and they sent back your photos and a freshly loaded camera....