Originally posted by RiceHigh (Do you think it should print "HOYA" on our cameras instead of PENTAX, if it is exactly what you think?)
Not anymore than I think every General Motors car should be branded "General Motors". Who owns the brand is irrelevant.
The point here is that the Panasonic name is well-regarded while Lumix means nothing to the general consumer. I'm not really saying what they're doing should be shunned as a general practice, but in this particular case I just don't think it works. The branding is terrible, with a generic name, generic logo, and no history to go with it.
When I say "this is not the way to do it" I'm not saying it's unpredecented to do this sort of thing. However -- the reason it worked for Asahi was that the Pentax camera became a smash hit in the market place FIRST, and THEN they rebranded themselves after their most popular product. This is a smart marketing move.
Barging into the camera business, as a respected company, with a totally new brand no one cares about (with a butt ugly logo) is probably
not. It's common that people refer to the G1 as the "Panasonic G1" despite it saying this nowhere on the actual camera. "Panasonic
Lumix G1" is even more common, (where "Lumix" works as a model name, like "Canon
Rebel XT") but barely anyone refers to it as just the "Lumix G1". That's a failure in branding.