Guerilla marketing for Delta 25, other Ilford films

There's a discussion over on Photo.Net about Ilford's considering producing Delta 25; and I wanted to chime in over here, since Simon Galley of Ilford monitors the APUG lists.

Guerilla marketing is how Fuji sells unique, limited run emulsions such as Fortia (extreme saturation E-6) and Natura (ISO 1600 C-41), for the Japanese market. As I understand it, Fortia has been produced twice, with the first run 30,000 and second run 50,000 rolls. What it appears Fuji does is that they only use a select few mail-order retailers for the distribution, instead of trying to "fill the pipeline" (or more like stuff the channel) of every mom & pop camera store.

This would not have possible 10 years ago; but with Internet forums like APUG and Photo.Net, this guerilla marketing works well... As Fuji has proven.

Dan Schwartz
Cherry Hill, NJ

Dan,

If I was in the boutique film business (Classicpan, Efke/Adox, Forte, Foma, Lucky etc), I would not waste my money buying an ad in the mainstream photo magazine. I am changing career's into public relations after years in retailing, sales and marketing couple that with my obsession with this hobby.
I would buy banner space on APUG, Rangefinder Forum, Camera Collector and link it to my website. I would write features and pitch the story to the magazines and maybe show up at events like the APUG conference and sell the film at an agressive price to build interest. I would also give away rolls of film to what I would term opinion leaders and let them play with the film, if they like what they use, you have your spokespersons in place.
Viral and marketing public relations for a small boutique business makes way more sense than buying a full page advert in Pop Photo.

Exactly, Uncle. I gave up the gear-head mags long ago. Never go near them. Gave up Tech Photo, too, because of their incressing focus away from my own interests. Now I haunt the usersgroups like this one, lf, and photo.net.

K.

PS. Make that PhotoTech.

I would be very interested to see if this film does indeed get made or not. I would trust Ilfords quality control over a few of the other options out there for 25 ISO speed film. I like Efke/ Adox 25, but its not a true panchromatic film. If Iford can beat TMAX 100 in terms of sharpness and resolution with this new film and come closer to APX 25 or maybe even Tech Pan, then we have a real winner. Especially if it can be done with normal developers. I would hope contrast could be tamed though as films this speed tend to be very contrasty.

Guerilla marketing, boutique business, unique products, etc. I'm very positive for all of the above, but I'm not too enthusiastic for Delta 25. It won't offer significant improvement over existing 100-speed tabular grain films because the resolution is largely limited by the camera optics, not by the film. If Ilford spends its significant resource to make new products, I would like to see an infrared film similar to Konica IR 750 (not SFX200), and maybe some new paper products. I used to be a heavy user of APX25 but now I'm completely satisfied with Fujifilm Acros.

Funny, I don't really care that Ilford is making an ISO 25 film. If I am using Ilford, I am using Delta 100 and HP5 400, pretty much it. I have some Pan 50 in my Contax IIIa to play around with, will it become one of my regulars, most likely not. I would go positively nuts if someone buys the emulsion formula and starts making Agfa APX 100 and 400 again.
What I really dig right now is the Efke/Adox 100 black and white. That is really nice film to work with.

Bill

I agree with you

Uncle Bill said:

Funny, I don't really care that Ilford is making an ISO 25 film. If I am using Ilford, I am using Delta 100 and HP5 400, pretty much it. I have some Pan 50 in my Contax IIIa to play around with, will it become one of my regulars, most likely not. I would go positively nuts if someone buys the emulsion formula and starts making Agfa APX 100 and 400 again.
What I really dig right now is the Efke/Adox 100 black and white. That is really nice film to work with.

Bill

Click to expand...

I agree with you, in the not caring less about Ilford, I stopped using any/all of their products years ago. Went back to Agfa after a short foray into the "I" world.

The Efke 100 is becoming my new main 100 film (now if there were only a TRUE Efke 400 to go with it). Am using Foma papers at the moment, anxious to try the Efke papers from Freestyle.

Planning a trip to Germany later this year, will make a stop in Efkeland and definitely stock up on European sizes, and the papers not carried over here.

Have heard that Fomapan 400 is close to the APX 400, but haven't tried it yet. Tried Forte, didn't work well for me.