Return on Intention

Admittedly, I am a little behind in my podcast listening and blog reading; however, I did just finish listening to Joseph Jaffe’s Across the Sound episode #82. As I sit here writing this post, Jaffe has put out episode #85, so I’m almost caught up.

In this episode of Across the Sound, Jaffe has a conversation with CK and Tangerine Toad about blogger outreach programs, and a lot about the Nikon D80 campaign specifically. For more info about the campaign, listen to the episode or search for Nikon D80 on technorati. In the course of the conversation, it seems that Nikon got a bad wrap. While I will agree the campaign wasn’t perfect, I can’t say it was bad. Here are my thoughts on the conversation.

1.) They should have used photo bloggers – I disagree. I think that photo bloggers are probably well aware of what the D80 is and what it is capable of doing. I agree this would have been a great idea if the D80 was revolutionary, but I don’t think it is. To be sure it’s a great camera, but it doesn’t do anything the Canon equivalent can’t do. For this campaign, I think getting a lot of people to talk about the Nikon worked well to get people to at least say “Nikon, huh? Let me go check them out.”

2.) This wasn’t a one shot deal. This isn’t the only thing that Nikon did to get attention for their D series cameras. They also gave a small town a bunch of D40’s and just let them go wild with them. They set up some web space for the townsfolk to upload their images and tell their story. This D80 campaign seems to be another aspect of this same strategy. I may only be speaking for myself, but between the two parts of this effort I have to say I am impressed with what Nikon is doing. They are putting product in the hands of people who will use them, and that has to generate some buzz. It also makes me think that Nikon is being a pretty good company. To me it says, “We at Nikon know we have a good product, so here check it out.” This is much more compelling than saying “We at Nikon have a good product, trust us and just buy it.”

3.) Final point – whether you think this was a good idea or not, just ask your self this – what did Canon do? I happen to be a Canon fan. When it was time to buy a digital camera I got the Canon Rebel XTi. I believe that Nikon is a good camera, for that matter I think the Nikon and the Canon are basically the same (although cnet doesn’t agree). I bought the Canon because I believe they have better lenses. But when I bought the camera, even though I thought that both Nikon and Canon were the same quality wise, I bought the Canon and didn’t even consider the Nikon. Now between these two campaigns for the D40 and D80, and the fact that a few of my friends and colleges went Nikon, I would have reconsidered my purchase.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 10:23 am and is filed under Doin' it right, Mar Comm, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.