When Jeffrey Hayzlett, chief marketing officer and vice president of Eastman Kodak Company, asked attendees at the Masters of Marketing how many of them bought a roll of film in the last year, about four people raised their hands. When he asked how many people own a digital camera, or have a camera on their phone, almost every hand in the room went up. “That’s what I’m here to talk to you about today,” he said, referring to digital technology’s dominance over conventional film and how it has affected Kodak. “I’m going to talk to you about one of the biggest turnarounds in American business history.”

“Our business used to be a traditional business. We did a very good job of reminding people to go out and stock up on film,” Hayzlett said. “We invented the digital camera in 1975 and put it aside because we didn’t think it was going to catch on right away. We were stuck with one mindset: film.” The company continued to push film, developing newer, better, and simpler photography equipment based on film until, suddenly, they found themselves on the outside of the industry looking in. “We had to find away to adapt to the times,” he said. “In less than five years our business shifted away from a traditional model to a digital model.” That quick a turnaround meant mind-bending changes.

In 2006, the year Hayzlett joined Kodak’s, most of the company’s marketing efforts were focused on U.S. consumers. “We had to shift that,” he said. “Most of our business comes from outside the U.S. — about a third from North America, a third from Europe, and a third from Asia.” When Hayzlett took over as CMO 18 months ago, Kodak had 3,500 marketing vendors around the world. In less than 12 months, Hayzlett reduced that number to 170. That was part of Kodak’s reinvention. The company had to get smaller, smarter, faster, and reestablish itself in the marketplace.

“Sixty percent of the people who work for Kodak are new in the past four years,” Hayzlett stated. The company’s future is in material and digital imaging science. “We have 25,000 patents in digital imaging,” Hayzlett pointed out. “We used to grow our own cattle so that we could process the bones and make the 21 different layers of gelatin needed for film. That’s where we used to be. That’s the past. We’ve replaced almost everything in our portfolio of products.” Kodak has shifted most of its portfolio to cater to b-to-b businesses. “We’ve shifted away from our consumer products,” Hayzlett noted. Today, 75 percent of Kodak’s business is in the b-to-b space.

According to Hayzlett, 40 percent of the printed materials in the world are touched by Kodak in some way. For the past 81 years, every motion picture that’s ever won an Oscar for best picture has used Kodak technology. It’s these types of behind-the-scenes services on which Kodak has wagered its future. “We have 19 products that drive almost all of our revenue, Hayzlett said. “All of those 19 products are either No. 1, 2, or 3 in the marketplace, and half of them didn’t exist two years ago. It’s been a great restart.”

But that restart has been a great marketing challenge for Kodak. As Hayzlett pointed out, how do you keep the company’s original tenant, “You push one button, we do the rest,” written by company founder George Eastman in the 1890s, relevant in a business that’s gone through a profound transformation? “We’re using the emotional value that’s inherent in our brand to reach out and connect with consumers,” Hayzlett said. “We need to recapture the Kodak moment.”

By running a contest to name a new product on the social networking site Twitter, Kodak generated 27,000 tweets from customers. The contest drove more traffic to Kodak’s Web site in four days than the company had received in the entire history of the site’s existence. By reaching out to consumers in an interactive way, said Hayzlett, Kodak garnered attention for its products while connecting with consumers on an emotional level. “Whether it’s our b-to-b business or the b-to-c business, the core of who we are is driving emotion. We want to help our b-to-b partners grow their business and we want to help you capture the memories that define you as a person,” Hayzlett said. “People don’t take pictures. They capture memories.”

Acting on that principle, Kodak set out to reclaim the Kodak moment by more directly engaging consumers through the Internet. The company rebuilt its Web site, posting professional photographs online with an accompanying story that explains what’s happening in the moment the picture was taken and offering contests that appeal to both b-to-b and b-to-c customers. By putting incentives on how consumers interact with the Kodak brand, Hayzlett argued, the company can reclaim the emotional relationship it once enjoyed with consumers in the past. It seems to be working: according to Hayzlett, Kodak’s online gallery attracts 75 million users and features more than 5 billion hi-res photos — more than all the photos that exist on all the networking sites in the world.

“The story will be legendary,” said James Vickers, sales manager at SAS Institute Inc., who heard Hayzlett’s speech. “The amount of time they were able to turn the company around in is inspirational. There’s a lot to be learned there.”

That Kodak’s story should be something of legend only seems natural. “We’re in the business of facilitating how people remember,” Hayzlett said. “This is our Kodak moment.”