[MikeyBugs95]

Honestly, if they want to loan, or even give me a camera, I will talk about them however much they want to whomever will listen. I already do that anyway but still. I'd wear a shirt emblazoned with Pentax all over it.

Speaking of that... I've found some shirts and sweatshirts emblazoned with Pentax and the KP and K-1.

[Mistral75]

(...) As Mistral75 has guessed IIRC, for each K-70 with kit lens, there might be $100 profit.

(...)

Less than that, around $50 for the manufacturer.

[Breakfastographer]

No I was certainly not intending to trash those guys and IDK why you should think I might have been. Perhaps you thought my inverted commas was sarcasm - no, it was to quote the names of the links. I was stating some facts about viewing statistics, and it is not those ambassadors' faults that Pentax's publicity as a whole is far below critical mass - it is Ricoh's fault, or deliberate policy.

FWIW, I have a small website myself about Pentax gear and the number of hits I have is in the low hundreds, and I expect some of those are only people landing by accident. So am I now trashing myself by your reckoning?

I'm sure every little helps, but let's maybe keep the term "ambassador" restricted to those that have a formal relationship with Ricoh. Perhaps we need a new term for those engaged in active online promotion of a brand without a formal relationship.

I wish those guys every encouragement and now that you have have mentioned them perhaps I shall put links to their pages on my own site.

The dead links on Frank Lee Ruggles' page are not his fault either - Ricoh USA own the website. It should only take a Ricoh intern two minutes to remove or correct those links but it seems they cannot be bothered. That is the point, it would be easy and cheap for Ricoh to put some more effective effort into publicity, and they don't need to spend $millions.

While you're right about the intern, I suspect the intern is just as confused about the lack of structure and strategy in Ricoh's web presentation as we are. It seems to mostly be based on an adage of "oh, this might be nice to do". They fire, and then forget. The other forum has a recurring theme of someone discovering some new part of Ricoh's websites that's been there for two years or so, and the posting a "hey, did you guys know this existed" message. Usually the answer is, "No we didn't know that existed, nobody told us, thanks for bringing it up now. It seems potentially interesting [usually to some specific target market - often beginners/those new to the brand]."

I doubt that Peter Forsgard's and Robin Wong's expenses played much part in Olympus Camera's financial collapse.

I don't believe anybody seriously thinks that Wong was Robin them. (Sorry, it had to be done.)

Notwithstanding the collapse, I guess sponsoring web influencers is a very cheap and cost-effective way of advertising. They have gear loaned to them for review, and information to disseminate, and maybe get their expenses paid to attend internal sales conferences in their area - but Pentax don't seem to have those anyway. I guess they don't get much in direct payment, those guys are genuine enthusiasts, enjoy making their vlogs, and get paid something by YouTube I understand.

But that takes us further away from a solution, because if you can't pay them to do it, what are the options for getting more of that stuff out into the world? Back to just making great products and hoping people will notice?

This below is the sort of YouTube video that gets the publicity, and costs almost nothing to produce. This young lady pulls in 420,000 views just talking about manual mode on DSLRs for beginners, despite the fact that she does not know how a shutter works (she thinks the mirror does it) and recommends using an F1.2 lens (for beginners??!). And the Canon name is in view all the time. I'd try this myself, I could do the script, but I'd fail on the charm.

Well, Ricoh has produced some similar videos, but they're mostly in Japanese. You can get English subtitles via Google's auto translation of its auto speech-to-text. Sometimes, you can even figure out what they mean.

[someasiancameraguy]

Whatever way you look at it traditional advertising has always operated on a price model of spend more to get more views, which I don't think Pentax has the finances to compete against the other brands.

[Serkevan]

Honestly, if they want to loan, or even give me a camera, I will talk about them however much they want to whomever will listen. I already do that anyway but still. I'd wear a shirt emblazoned with Pentax all over it.

Speaking of that... I've found some shirts and sweatshirts emblazoned with Pentax and the KP and K-1.

I already wear the PentaxForums t-shirt, where's my review copy of the D FA 21 Ltd? I promise it won't get lost in the mail

[clackers]

Whatever way you look at it traditional advertising has always operated on a price model of spend more to get more views, which I don't think Pentax has the finances to compete against the other brands.

Yes, I don't think it works for any of the brands, now.

That's part of the reason Photokina has been cancelled, the financial involvement of those companies was needed for it to run.

IIRC, Nikon's plan to get out of its disastrous losses includes reducing fixed costs. That means less employees, less plants, pulling out of markets (Malaysia apparently the first?), less advertising, less products, give up on consumers and sell to pros, corporations and prosumers, to survive.

Sound familiar?

What Ricoh has already done (and copped it from us armchair experts) the big companies are painfully having to implement. Ricoh understood the consumer camera business and where it was going.

Perhaps it was a help that Ricoh has always been a B2B business, they are well aware of the hazards of the other companies being B2C. That low end market looked fantastic in 2010 and a dumpster fire in 2020.

[Lord Lucan]

Well, I for one would be interested in having a look, so just put the site in your signature, or at the very least in your 'About Me'!....Look, if you haven't worked out the economics now from your own website, a company gets very little back from putting into almost every vlogger or website

Link, please. We wanna see!

The economics of my website are simple : I pay £10 per month for the hosting space Web Hosting | Unlimited Web Hosting UK with SSD and Backups | Krystal Hosting (I have more than one website there) and receive nothing. Static, no ads, no cookies, no spyware; it was not my intention to make any money from it. Obviously Ricoh needs a bigger hosting plan for their Pentax stuff than that, but still peanuts for a corporation. I can't imagine Youtube vloggers get paid much, probably they cost more in administration.

My Pentax website is really for the film guys and my own convenience. I have some Pentax brochures from the 1980s and I copied and put them there. - I do buy and sell some gear from that era. A while ago I did give a link in the film SLR, flash, and Medium Format sub-forums. I might expand things a bit, mainly for my own amusement. Pentax Brochures

[luftfluss]

Cool!

[clackers]

The economics of my website are simple : I pay £10 per month for the hosting space Web Hosting | Unlimited Web Hosting UK with SSD and Backups | Krystal Hosting (I have more than one website there) and receive nothing. Static, no ads, no cookies, no spyware; it was not my intention to make any money from it. Obviously Ricoh needs a bigger hosting plan for their Pentax stuff than that, but still peanuts for a corporation. I can't imagine Youtube vloggers get paid much, probably they cost more in administration.

My Pentax website is really for the film guys and my own convenience. I have some Pentax brochures from the 1980s and I copied and put them there. - I do buy and sell some gear from that era. A while ago I did give a link in the film SLR, flash, and Medium Format sub-forums. I might expand things a bit, mainly for my own amusement. Pentax Brochures

I like it, LL!

And not scans, that brochure, but you photographed each page with flash, right?

Obviously little prospect of monetizing, hence not relevant to our discussion of the economics of advertising, but a labour of love, clearly!

[reh321]

I already wear the PentaxForums t-shirt, where's my review copy of the D FA 21 Ltd? I promise it won't get lost in the mail

I try to plan my use of PF T-shirts so they coincide with visits to museums or when we go on bird walks - in other words, when some other person taking photos may see what I'm wearing,
even though I expect to actually influence very few people.

[Cerebum]

I actually don't even use my Pentax strap. I prefer the muggers to target people advertising Canon on every part of their bodies. Genuinely, one of the first bits of advice I was given was to not advertise that I was carrying expensive kit. That's why I love limiteds. Thieves go for big and shiny, my KP looks like a film body, and being tiny, it hides under my jacket.

[Rondec]

I imagine Pentax will increase their web presence a bit when the K3 III finally hits stores. I know I saw some Facebook adds for the GR III when it came out. Not a huge thing, but something.

Part of the problem is that the internet is very good at selling you stuff that you already own. I look for a USB 3.0 cable and buy one and then I immediately get bombarded with USB cables from different sites. The only problem is that having bought it, I really am no longer interested. If I buy a K-1 II today, odds are good I will not buy another camera tomorrow, even if I am a dyed in the wool Pentaxian and you bombard me with advertising.

[Lord Lucan]

And not scans, that brochure, but you photographed each page with flash, right?

They were all taken with my K-1 in natural light (north facing room) , mostly with an M100mm macro. The larger ones, which are up to A2 size, were with a standard lens. The biggest problem is getting even illumination without reflections. Flash has to be at an angle or it relflects (these are glossy), and with an angle the flash light falls off across the page. I reduced the resolution in PP as much as possible while still readable, to minimise the download sizes - it's a balancing act. I do have a scanner but it is slow and it does not do A2!

[Kobie]

Honestly, if they want to loan, or even give me a camera, I will talk about them however much they want to whomever will listen. I already do that anyway but still. I'd wear a shirt emblazoned with Pentax all over it.

Speaking of that... I've found some shirts and sweatshirts emblazoned with Pentax and the KP and K-1.

Well, the official answer I received direct from Pentax is "We do not have cameras available for reviewers yet". Sooo, maybe they're looking in to that for the future. Or, it was a polite way to say no but keep hopes up lol.

---------- Post added 12-17-20 at 05:09 PM ----------

I imagine Pentax will increase their web presence a bit when the K3 III finally hits stores. I know I saw some Facebook adds for the GR III when it came out. Not a huge thing, but something.

Part of the problem is that the internet is very good at selling you stuff that you already own. I look for a USB 3.0 cable and buy one and then I immediately get bombarded with USB cables from different sites. The only problem is that having bought it, I really am no longer interested. If I buy a K-1 II today, odds are good I will not buy another camera tomorrow, even if I am a dyed in the wool Pentaxian and you bombard me with advertising.

Well, here in Ontario, Pentax in a store is unheard of. They just aren't available in person unless you pick it up after having it special ordered in.

[Kunzite]

I imagine Pentax will increase their web presence a bit when the K3 III finally hits stores. I know I saw some Facebook adds for the GR III when it came out. Not a huge thing, but something.

Probably that's why they still avoided some key subjects (e.g. autofocus and image quality) in the Product Stories published so far