[Leica] re: leica name recognition

[kitmc at acmefoto.com (Kit McChesney)]

Uh, Kyle, I'm not talking about pros. Of course pros know what the heck a
Leica is. We're talking about who the mass marketing machine is targeting.
There are WAY more amateur photographers running around than there are
"pros" (however you define professional) buying lots of Canons and Nikons
and even Leicas, proportionately, than there are professionals buying them,
otherwise none of these companies would be in business. If there are fewer
Leicas sold, even at the higher price, than one would expect, I attribute
some of that to salespeople who are not trained to sell them. 

How many clients have I served who have told me, "Well, I went into my
favorite big camera store the other day to look at a Leica, and the salesman
said, 'uh, what the heck do you want one of those for?'" Either that, or as
soon as they mention that they'd leica Leica, the salesman (and yes, I am
being sexist, because most of the camerasellers these days are boys, though
I've been treated just as badly by female salespersons as by male) says,
'are you a professional? You won't want that unless you're a professional.'"
Huh? Duh? Wha?

Excuse me? Sloppy salesmanship, methinks. So there is an opportunity to
introduce someone to a Leica. Perhaps the introducer doesn't know enough
about the camera to say much of anything. With that attitude--"whaddya want
it for?"--I'd bet the salesperson has no idea what to say about much of
anything, Leica or not! 

Kit (kitmc@acmefoto.com)

-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+kitmc=acmefoto.com@leica-users.org
[mailto:lug-bounces+kitmc=acmefoto.com@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of Kyle
Cassidy
Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2004 5:19 PM
To: 'lug@leica-users.org'
Subject: [Leica] re: leica name recognition

kit sed:

>Leica sales suffer from not being promoted properly by 
>salesfolks in the camera business. It's just easier to 
>sell an SLR that everyone has heard of in the latest magazines 

i can guarrentee you that every one of those photographers in that line with
the 300mm f 2.8 lens on the monopod waiting for the president to get out of
marine one knows what a leica is. it's not name recognition, it's
practicality. i'm sure a good percentage of them would love to be using a
leica to do their job but they'd get consistantly beaten to the punch by all
the people with the white lenses and never sell a photo. i see there's a 4
gigabyte hitachi microdrive now -- that's a lot of photos without having to
open up the back of your camera. and despite what mark r. says about the
metering system on 30 year old cameras, it doesn't hold a candle to matrix
metering when you're doing something like daylight balenced fill flash.
imho, that's the reason the pro's (ted and sal excepted, of course) arent
using leicas, not because they don't know what they are or because leica's
advertising campaing is sub-par.

my .02 take it for what it's worth.

kc
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