Re: [Leica] How could the R8 be bettered?

[Walter S Delesandri <walt@jove.acs.unt.edu>]

Perhaps it's because 95% of Leica's customers are wealthy (and I won't argue 
what wealthy is) amateurs or 'owners' -- maybe not even up to the 
term 'amateur', in the traditional use of the word.
Possibly also because 95+% of pros don't use Leica?....now to be fair, 
probably half of them don't use 35mm at all, but you get the picture...
Leica's advertising to pros would be like Audio Research advertising 
to movie theatre operators! (funny, with the recent Leica 
reliability issues, that analogy takes on even more significance! :) :)

Nope, Leica's marketing has been right on the last few years, I >HATE>
to admit......

Walt


On Fri, 11 Dec 1998 11:41:10 -0800 Donal Philby 
<donalphilby@earthlink.net> wrote:
> David W. Almy wrote:
> > 
> > Fix Leica's marketing strategy. The full page R8 ad says, "...You're a
> > serious amateur photographer...." I've been doing this for 25 years,
> > have a B.S. degree in photography, have $30k worth of Leica stuff in my
> > car right now, and have an exhibit up at the Smithsonian (BFD to all,
> > eh?). Probably am a tad past "amateur" here. Why not just say "serious
> > photographer", which covers the waterfront? This is a minor point but
> > symptomatic of amateur advertising work. Who's writing this stuff,
> > anyway? Photographers should at the very least highly contribute to the
> > ad and marketing copy! That's not happening now. How about a testimonial
> > series of "Great photographers & the Leica R8"? 
> 
> David, 
> I've already pitched this exact idea to people at Leica USA, even
> offered to write/create them for a trade out (I spent 15 years writing
> copy and owned an ad agency, so this isn't just a lark!) and was
> basically told to go away, that the market IS amateurs, especially
> collectors.  There have been a few ads in Leica Photographie (such as
> one I can remember by Sieff) that explored this ground, albeit
> gingerly.  I think of what Nikon does with their multipage ads are
> tremendous communication.  And Canon's latest series of brochures on the
> EOS-3 and new strobes demonstrate what I have always believed about
> advertising:  if people are interested, they will read enormous amounts
> of information.  I helped a friend of mine write an ad for a hard drive
> company once.  The two page ad used 1500 words with virtually no hype. 
> It was a tremendous fight to get the execs to agree to run it.  But the
> first time it appeared, the company had to hire 20 people just to keep
> up with the telephone calls.  After that they were believers.
> 
> donal
> -- 
> Donal Philby
> San Diego
> http://www.donalphilby.com
>