Originally posted by emr I guess when the times are hard, they lay off the marketing section and somebody's grandmother does it on the side.
No. It's more difficult than that.
Since this forum is full of marketing gurus, I'm surprised no one has chewed his up correctly yet.
Any company can do a better job in PR, and that's why Pentax has gotten an all new PR partner, as announced few days before Photokina. And they didn't invite any expert from you here, luckily.
The reasons for confusion re K-5 are few: very tight lips of Hoya, keeping cards close to chest till the very last moment, and unexpected happening just before Photokina -- Nikon's D7000.
Nikon has dropped a bomb no one expected. It left Canon bezerked with their 60D, and it left Pentax in a limbo. They weren't sure how to advertise the product because of the D7000. They have surely had a plan how to proceed, but D7000 changed the approach. They needed to respond, and still not to kill the sales or even the good impression about the brand new product.
First the price: almost all of you and DPR folks started whinging about alleged price of $1599. K-5 is a D300s class camera, and D300s successor will undoubtedly cost more. But little rats demand that K-5 which looks similar to D7000 must match that price.
Then there are specs. Because both cameras share same sensor, people pre-assume image quality must be 'same', thus forgetting all the other details. Today that all what matters: ISO noise, sensor and price. All else is irrelevant for this new breed of modern digital 'photographers'. Some details of the Nikon system work in favour of D7000, some in favour of K-5, but in any case, K-5 does cost more to produce because it does have a better constructed / expensive body, IS.
Communicating back and forth within teams and deciding about prices is not an easy thing, esp. very last moment. That's why K-5 got an ISO bump in the last minute, from planned ISO 12800 to ISO 51200 (perhaps technically possible, and to calibrated before production begins), to beat D7000 at least in some visible specs (D7000 specs and prices were announced publicly, thus set in stone).
Competition is not easy and some players are playing this game in an unpredictable way. Nikon wants to smudge borders between certain camera models / ranges and forcing direct competitors to drop into the lower band by forcing a lower price on a similar set of some specs. It is all a matter of perception, and Nikon is playing well in the field of perception because they lead the game of 'digital shooters' taste -- low noise, HiISO. They can skim a lot by carefully engineering a camera with lower value that appears to be of higher spec in areas digital shooters expect. As said above, same sensor and similar construction (albeit weaker, but never explicitly told by the press) works in favour of Nikon, but not in favour of Pentax.
If Nikon gets K-5 eliminated by competing with D7000, and Canon out of game by eliminating its 60D with the same camera, then they can place D400 'above' and charge
even more for it because they'd add something that 'sounds' like an improvement and advertise just that and let all of you work for them. You're Nikon's PR team -- they don't need hire no one else. You force Pentax to work hard for a dime, and allow Nikon to work less for more $, by mudding the waters and avoiding real innovations where others excel.
This all happens silently, and with an approval and applause from the blind audience. They don't care what they get exactly, as long as it 'sounds' similar. But whole of life is in details; that's why, sadly, today's photography has more bangs than life. Cameras are instantly shot dead before even announced and you did that with K-5.
Blind little whingers expect that, to pay less and less for more and more, and because some manufacturers have no enough camera models for the competition, they are forced to comply to the price war in the category their competitors are creating for them -- not true market needs or real abilities of the system + camera equation.
If consumers understood what is the total value of the camera plus system uniqueness, all this would be a non-issue and would never happen.
But they understand just nothing.