Marketing and Advertising Photographic Film

xo-whiplock · Sep 5, 2015

Here's an idea that came to me with reading a couple of other threads here on Kodak and Fuji and seeing people guessing why Kodak and Fuji both do not seem like they are willing to spend any money or campaign and increase film sales in the face of the overwhelming numbers of digital consumers and the digital devices and products that these consumers are addicted to buying and using. Basically, these huge corporations are not marketing their film products because they do not feel the money spent will produce the desired return on investment is dollars spent in advertising. This needs to change.

If I were Fuji or Kodak, I'd be robbing Peter to pay Paul (meaning using profits from other endeavors to keep film production going), and pushing film like a good illegal drug dealer would do (meaning getting people hooked on film by not just sitting back and waiting for people to come to them, but go out and push it out to the prospective buyers). Get new users, and get these new users to spread the word and push it to their friends, and give the fledgling pusher a deal on supplies. What kind of "high" the customers can expect would be that of using film with other film addicts, but there needs to be social drivers and incentives to motivate life events that are film centric.

I'm against drugs of all kinds, even prescription drugs, but the marketing and profits of both are well known by all. This simple business model can and will produce ever increasing numbers of film users. The trick is to get consumers to switch from digital to film to where the "high" they get from film is a better high. ;D Instant films are providing this better high. Traditional film will, when more darkrooms are made public access and they have high end scanners, and not consumer scanners.

Get film back into schools and colleges. Teach film to a new generation. Banks and financial institutions drop the ban on film related advertising dollars and future investing. Create a new film market base on the qualities of film and the hands on art aspect of doing film photography in the same way one learns to draw, paint, or do craft making.

pdeeh · Sep 5, 2015

off you go then.

xo-whiplock · Sep 5, 2015

pdeeh said:
off you go then.

Actually, it's "off you go then" to everyone!

We all need to understand that each of us has the ability to influence those around us. When we use film for our photography, the other photographers around us notice and wonder and ask themselves and us "why use film?"

If we give the experience of film to someone that has never had the experience, they then "get it." More than likely they will remember it, and want to repeat the experience, as it is a "better high" than what they had before.

xo-whiplock · Sep 5, 2015

Michael R 1974 said:
But you're approaching this from the perspective of someone who gets a high from film. We tend to look back at the pre-digital photo era and glorify it because we are into it. But for the vast majority of people it was nothing more than the only way to make photographs. They happily moved to the convenience of digital as soon as it was a viable alternative. Rather than getting a high from making pictures using film/darkroom, I suspect at this point the vast majority of people (including pros) would simply find it inefficient, cumbersome and severely limiting.

The same argument would be that cooking food at home from scratch introduces the "cons" that you use to justify not using film. I mean, why do film photography when there's a faster and easier way to get images, right? Well, it has to do with skill and craft, art, desire, intended fulfillment/gratification goals by either having it all done for you, or the rewards of doing something by hand yourself.

Perhaps the last generation wanted what you speak of in the way of fast and easy, but the new generation is looking for more, more substantial meaning than fast food and microwave meals. Things like home cooked meals and everyone sitting down for dinner together. There are too many things in life that are now so superficial, that a new generation is asking "where's the substance and intrinsic meaning?" They find meaning in creating things with their hands and sharing what they made with their hands with others that make things with their hands.

This "new generation" was born with automated digital computer "do it for you" click the mouse or push the button, and want to use more than a finger or a thumb to make something happen. They want full control of what and how they chose to make their own art that requires not just a finger or a thumb to push, but their whole body, mind, and spirit to create something personal and intimate uniquely them. They are sick of the homogenized factory preset fast food diet.

removed account4 · Sep 5, 2015

hi xo -

i agree with you, we are all envoys .. but even the die-hards who
i see when i am out and about with either a hand held camera or a giant
cloth over the head view camera, seem to smile and remember the good old days
and want nothing to do with it anymore, or say " yeah i should get back in my darkroom again"
( and 5-9 months later i see them again and they haven't, but have bought a nice convenient leica )
its OK, it doesn't matter to me anyways, , swim upstream, the film companies will be around, or try to at least
for as long as they can ... silver is ultra cheap now because of banks hoarding it, so hopefully film companies are taking advantage
of this and stockpiling silver and when the party's over and film and paper cant' be purchased anymore, it will be like it used to be ..
where the real die-hards will make their own, have fun, and even their snapshots will have more value to them, and to their sphere of people around them
because it is out of the usual, takes more effort, skill, patience, money, to do "stuff"

personally, i think if there was a huge boom in people using color film ( which is what most people want anyways ) it will be a problem
because people are lazy, they don't want to have to deal with searching down someone to develop their rolls ( even though google makes it easy )
they don't want to have to deal with sending it to fuji and maybe not getting film back &c seeing most of the processing infrastructure has been dismantled ...
it will just cause a bunch of negativity ( sorry for the bad pun ) seeing they bought this expensive film, and no one's left to process it ...

i'm lucky, i have a great lab down the street, she can process and make prints ... not so sure everyone is blessed with someone local ...

YMMV

Sal Santamaura · Sep 5, 2015

Film manufacturers like Kodak are listening and putting great effort into film marketing. That's the reason pieces such as this

http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/5/9265093/kodak-rock-bottom-ifa-2015

get published.

xo-whiplock · Sep 5, 2015

jnanian said:
hi xo -

i agree with you, we are all envoys .. but even the die-hards who
i see when i am out and about with either a hand held camera or a giant
cloth over the head view camera, seem to smile and remember the good old days
and want nothing to do with it anymore, or say " yeah i should get back in my darkroom again"
( and 5-9 months later i see them again and they haven't, but have bought a nice convenient leica )
its OK, it doesn't matter to me anyways, , swim upstream, the film companies will be around, or try to at least
for as long as they can ... silver is ultra cheap now because of banks hoarding it, so hopefully film companies are taking advantage
of this and stockpiling silver and when the party's over and film and paper cant' be purchased anymore, it will be like it used to be ..
where the real die-hards will make their own, have fun, and even their snapshots will have more value to them, and to their sphere of people around them
because it is out of the usual, takes more effort, skill, patience, money, to do "stuff"

personally, i think if there was a huge boom in people using color film ( which is what most people want anyways ) it will be a problem
because people are lazy, they don't want to have to deal with searching down someone to develop their rolls ( even though google makes it easy )
they don't want to have to deal with sending it to fuji and maybe not getting film back &c seeing most of the processing infrastructure has been dismantled ...
it will just cause a bunch of negativity ( sorry for the bad pun ) seeing they bought this expensive film, and no one's left to process it ...

i'm lucky, i have a great lab down the street, she can process and make prints ... not so sure everyone is blessed with someone local ...

YMMV

Film is for those that want to be photographic film artists. These artists will learn and do whatever it takes to produce their works of art using photographic film and photographic film processes. Please make a mental distinction between average photographic consumer and not so average photographic film artists.

xo-whiplock · Sep 5, 2015

Sal Santamaura said:
Film manufacturers like Kodak are listening and putting great effort into film marketing. That's the reason pieces such as this

http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/5/9265093/kodak-rock-bottom-ifa-2015

get published.

You mean Kodak has designed a product to meet the special needs people with smart phones? The problem is not with Kodak, but the consumers having lost the ability to do film photography and processing. This needs to be addressed by getting film back into schools and colleges.

Sal Santamaura · Sep 5, 2015

xo-whiplock said:
You mean Kodak has designed a product to meet the special needs people with smart phones?...

No, the product is undoubtedly designed and produced in some slave-wage country and marketed using the "Kodak" logo. Which allegedly has some value.

xo-whiplock · Sep 5, 2015

Sal Santamaura said:
No, the product is undoubtedly designed and produced in some slave-wage country and marketed using the "Kodak" logo. Which allegedly has some value.

Oh, I see. Well, the Kodak brand is a valuable branding for those looking to get a brand logo on their products. Here's a list of products and how to go about getting a license to put the Kodak brand on prospective products: http://www.kodak.com/ek/US/en/Home_Main_new/Brand_Partnerships/All_Licensed_Products.htm

Brand is part of marketing and advertising, and in the case of the selfi stick, the designers of it most likely applied to Kodak to put the Kodak brand on it as a means to sell to a larger market using a highly well known brand logo. Who the actual company and where it was made is not known, but due to international production of many products to be sold in all parts of the world, it is most likely they did not chose a manufacturing site where production cost were the highest, or really not the lowest either. They would chose a place that could produce the product with the best cost/quality ratio along with cost of getting product to market. The "Kodak" name pretty much sells the product on brand alone.

Sal Santamaura · Sep 5, 2015

xo-whiplock said:
...the Kodak brand is a valuable branding for those looking to get a brand logo on their products...

Such is the hope of Kodak. Whether or not that is a correct assumption remains to be seen.

xo-whiplock said:
...in the case of the selfi stick, the designers of it most likely applied to Kodak to put the Kodak brand on it as a means to sell to a larger market using a highly well known brand logo...

However, the market you describe in this thread, young students, probably don't know the Kodak brand at all. I suspect that, for selling to them, it will be about as valuable as "Polaroid," which has no more meaning on the various junk it's licensed to.

removed account4 · Sep 5, 2015

xo-whiplock said:
Film is for those that want to be photographic film artists. These artists will learn and do whatever it takes to produce their works of art using photographic film and photographic film processes. Please make a mental distinction between average photographic consumer and not so average photographic film artists.

sorry i don't understand what you said at all ..

xo-whiplock · Sep 5, 2015

Sal Santamaura said:
Such is the hope of Kodak. Whether or not that is a correct assumption remains to be seen.

However, the market you describe in this thread, young students, probably don't know the Kodak brand at all. I suspect that, for selling to them, it will be about as valuable as "Polaroid," which has no more meaning on the various junk it's licensed to.

You mean that's the hope of the company that must apply for and pay for the right to put the Kodak logo on their product, for which only those Kodak evaluates to their standards receive this privilege to pay to have Kodak's logo on their products. Kodak does not hope anything. They require a fee of companies seeking to put the Kodak logo on their products. You clearly have no idea how branding works, why it works, and what establishes value in a brand. The Kodak brand is worth several to many several billions of dollars should anyone wish to try and buy the full rights to the name and so license it to those looking to use it. Also, to even imply that a new generation do not know, or would be unaware of the Kodak brand is just plain stupid.

xo-whiplock · Sep 5, 2015

jnanian said:
sorry i don't understand what you said at all ..

Consumer that takes photos is not the same as photographer that uses film to create art. Without making this distinction, and saying things about general consumers and saying these things apply to those that use film to create art is an injustice to photography as an art form and those that practice it.

Sirius Glass · Sep 5, 2015

xo-whiplock said:
Here's an idea that came to me with reading a couple of other threads here on Kodak and Fuji and seeing people guessing why Kodak and Fuji both do not seem like they are willing to spend any money or campaign and increase film sales in the face of the overwhelming numbers of digital consumers and the digital devices and products that these consumers are addicted to buying and using. Basically, these huge corporations are not marketing their film products because they do not feel the money spent will produce the desired return on investment is dollars spent in advertising. This needs to change.

Over ten years ago Kodak and Fuji learned that money spent on advertising did not result in increasing film sales. Sending good money after bad expenditures is a bad idea. If you search the old APUG threads you will find many discussions on this subject.

What can one do? Encourage others to use film: people you meet on the street, friends, visit camera clubs, ... , volunteer to teach photography in schools, ... There are APUG threads about "Want have you done to encourage film use today?"

removed account4 · Sep 5, 2015

it isn't the artists that carry a company
consumers do all the heavy lifting
especially consumers who think they
are artistic ...plenty of consumers
have an artistic bent ...

Xmas · Sep 5, 2015

jnanian said:
sorry i don't understand what you said at all ..

Lie!
I good % of our hoardings and underground adverts are fine art iPhone 6 photos.
Kodak and Fuji just jump price to extract more money from mug punters.

I refer you to the '87 hit with the chorus line 'tell me lies...

xo-whiplock · Sep 5, 2015

jnanian said:
it isn't the artists that carry a company
consumers do all the heavy lifting
especially consumers who think they
are artistic ...plenty of consumers
have an artistic bent ...

To advertise to a new market, it must be established that film photography has a hierarchy, unlike the world of digital. In fact, it's these two colliding world views that are at odds. For film to be successful, photographic film stars need to be made for everyone to look up to and aspire to be like them. This no different than other industries that have stars and fans. Yes, the fans make the purchases, but the stars drive the fans to want to make the purchases. This long established model has been lost with the advent of digital photography, that seeks to place everyone on the same stage and everyone is a star (with or without talent). Now that digital image capture has gone to smart phones, it's time to re-establish the old model of professional artist rock star on stage to inspire fans to become like them, or imitate them the best they can until they find their own star light.

removed account4 · Sep 5, 2015

sounds fun,
good luck with that !

xo-whiplock · Sep 5, 2015

jnanian said:
sounds fun,
good luck with that !

I don't need luck. Just need marketing and advertising to educate consumers that film photography is the better option.

Sirius Glass · Sep 5, 2015

xo-whiplock said:
I don't need luck. Just need marketing and advertising to educate consumers that film photography is the better option.

It would also help if you had a nearly infinite budget and approval authority.

xo-whiplock · Sep 5, 2015

jnanian said:
hi xo -

i agree with you, we are all envoys .. but even the die-hards who
i see when i am out and about with either a hand held camera or a giant
cloth over the head view camera, seem to smile and remember the good old days
and want nothing to do with it anymore, or say " yeah i should get back in my darkroom again"
( and 5-9 months later i see them again and they haven't, but have bought a nice convenient leica )
its OK, it doesn't matter to me anyways, , swim upstream, the film companies will be around, or try to at least
for as long as they can ... silver is ultra cheap now because of banks hoarding it, so hopefully film companies are taking advantage
of this and stockpiling silver and when the party's over and film and paper cant' be purchased anymore, it will be like it used to be ..
where the real die-hards will make their own, have fun, and even their snapshots will have more value to them, and to their sphere of people around them
because it is out of the usual, takes more effort, skill, patience, money, to do "stuff"

personally, i think if there was a huge boom in people using color film ( which is what most people want anyways ) it will be a problem
because people are lazy, they don't want to have to deal with searching down someone to develop their rolls ( even though google makes it easy )
they don't want to have to deal with sending it to fuji and maybe not getting film back &c seeing most of the processing infrastructure has been dismantled ...
it will just cause a bunch of negativity ( sorry for the bad pun ) seeing they bought this expensive film, and no one's left to process it ...

i'm lucky, i have a great lab down the street, she can process and make prints ... not so sure everyone is blessed with someone local ...

YMMV

Let me re-write this to say what you are really saying...

"i agree with you, we are all envoys .. but even the die-hards who
i see when i am out and about with either a hand held camera or a giant
cloth over the head view camera, seem to smile and remember the good old days
and want nothing to do with it anymore, or say " yeah i should get back in my darkroom again"
( and 5-9 months later i see them again and they haven't, but have bought a nice convenient leica )"

I'm an envoy for digital. Forget film and buy a Leica digital camera instead.

"its OK, it doesn't matter to me anyways, , swim upstream, the film companies will be around, or try to at least
for as long as they can ... silver is ultra cheap now because of banks hoarding it, so hopefully film companies are taking advantage
of this and stockpiling silver and when the party's over and film and paper cant' be purchased anymore, it will be like it used to be ..
where the real die-hards will make their own, have fun, and even their snapshots will have more value to them, and to their sphere of people around them because it is out of the usual, takes more effort, skill, patience, money, to do "stuff""

I'm not OK, and it does matter to me. You are wasting your time. Film is dead. People that use film are idiots.

"personally, i think if there was a huge boom in people using color film ( which is what most people want anyways ) it will be a problem
because people are lazy, they don't want to have to deal with searching down someone to develop their rolls ( even though google makes it easy )
they don't want to have to deal with sending it to fuji and maybe not getting film back &c seeing most of the processing infrastructure has been dismantled ...
it will just cause a bunch of negativity ( sorry for the bad pun ) seeing they bought this expensive film, and no one's left to process it ..."

Digital meets the needs of the lazy photographer.

"i'm lucky, i have a great lab down the street, she can process and make prints ... not so sure everyone is blessed with someone local ..."

It's a good thing I only upload to the internet, as printing is expensive and a waste of time.

IMO, you don't belong here in this group.

Hell, everyone so far has exhibited the same degree of disdain of film, just none so skilled at double speak as this one.
It's like a cut and paste collection of the best-of BS against film.

Alan Klein · Sep 6, 2015

Film is like a drug. I love the smell. I can eat it.

Xmas · Sep 6, 2015

Yesterday I

Shot 5x cassettes
Two Tx
Two double x
One tmax100

F2 and FM

Tried to motivate two ladies

One a oil on canvas painter who was painting in the same domain as me I tried to encourage her to continue.

One as ex photog student who complained film was too dear I told her where to buy 35mm film and tank cheap.

I did not waste as much time trolling...

RalphLambrecht · Sep 6, 2015

Michael R 1974 said:
But you're approaching this from the perspective of someone who gets a high from film. We tend to look back at the pre-digital photo era and glorify it because we are into it. But for the vast majority of people it was nothing more than the only way to make photographs. They happily moved to the convenience of digital as soon as it was a viable alternative. Rather than getting a high from making pictures using film/darkroom, I suspect at this point the vast majority of people (including pros) would simply find it inefficient, cumbersome and severely limiting.

+1

Marketing and Advertising Photographic Film

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