Yes, duly noted
@Henning Serger and you're right. Let's end the KA diversion here.
Thanks, highly appreciated.
So let's go on with the Pentax 17:
I am convinced we all here wish that Pentax will continue their film camera project, and offering more film cameras in the future, for different target groups in the market.
But that can only happen when the Pentax 17 is / will be a success! Success means: High sales numbers and happy / satisfied customers.
For high sales numbers of course also an excellent marketing is needed:
- First, the potential customers simply need to know that there is a new product on the market, they must be aware of that. Publicity is needed.
- Second: There must be many independent test reports, which - in the best case - report how good the camera is, and recommend buying it.
And concerning marketing of the Pentax 17, Pentax has so far indeed made a really excellent job:
1. With officially announcing that they are really considering / evaluating making new film cameras again they created huge awareness and very positive vibes in the film community.
2. The videos in which Takeo Suzuki (TKO), the responsible designer and head of the project team, then later explained ideas, potential routes/paths of development, challenges and hurdles, and asked for feedback from the film community, have been really excellent.
Because the film community has been
involved in the process right from the beginning. And the honesty and open-mindedness of TKO has been really great.
3. They created special social-media accounts for the Pentax film project as well, to even get in better contact with the film community.
4. In-time before the official product launch Pentax sent lots of final finished cameras from the first production run (not prototypes) to a huge number of (potential) reviewers. And not only to film guys, but also to (mainly) digital camera guys / reviewers.
Absolutely the right decision:
If you look now for Pentax 17 reviews online, you will find dozens of them. Including digital main stream media sources like dpreview or Petapixel. I've found also lots of reports and reviews in printed media about it.
So even almost all digital shooters meanwhile know about the Pentax 17. The Pentax 17 is probably the most reviewed / reported camera this year, surpassing even the new digital cams.
That is very good, and it is also needed: Publicity and awareness are really essential for a market success of this project.
5. Pentax organized together with their national subsidiaries and big(ger) local distributors or camera stores public events on which the Pentax 17 was presented directly to the customer. I know of such events happening in Japan, the US, Germany, France and Italy (and probably that took place in even more countries).
In the past Pentax was often heavily critisized for their bad / insufficent marketing (and for good reasons). Fortunately the situation has changed: The marketing for the Pentax K3-III was already significantly improved.
And with the Pentax 17 they have made so far an even much better, almost perfect marketing job. That should be highly appreciated.
At the end I just want to give you a link to something you will certainly enjoy and having fun:
I talked about the Pentax 17 as the probably most reviewed camera of this year. I have watched lots of these reviews.
And I want to give you a link the the by far
most charming review of all of them, by the 12 year old offspring / new blood Scottish photographer Xiana McAdam.
Please have a look from 18:40 min. onwards, and enjoy
:
Best regards
,
Henning