Originally posted by stevebrot I agree, so you were not referring to advertising
per se. The problem with YouTube or the Facebook page is that both require that you go looking for it, so I just did. I searched on Goggle for "Why should I buy a Pentax". At the top was a question posed to Quora followed by two videos by Mattias Burling and one by CameraVille and then a whole bunch of forum posts and a fairly recent shutterbug article that was pretty decent. Translation, this is not looking good (could someone make CameraVille go away?) and I asked for the brand by name!
I would have expected to at least see a little bit from Ricoh somewhere, so yes, your point is well-taken. Changing it up a little, I asked, "Is Pentax a good camera brand". This one was a little better and brought up a 2017 Adorama article on best camera brands where Pentax was given third place billing below Canon and Nikon (in that order), but ahead of the rest of all the rest. There was also a blogger article from about a week ago on best brands where Pentax placed 4th by popularity just behind Sony. The assessment was very positive except for suggesting that the company is dying and that it has a limited lens selection.
Hmmmmm...
How about "best camera brand to buy"? First promising link (best cameras of 2020), no Pentax. Another best for 2020...again, no Pentax. Third link kept popping up unrelated "stuff"; ditto for the second. PC Magazine...no Pentax. Ricoh N. America has a page called "Five Reasons to Buy Pentax", but it is invisible to Google search. (No SEO...
)
It appears there is a general failure in effort to sell cameras to noobs and perhaps not anyone. The Pentax USA Web site is OK, but makes for a hard user experience overall with camera detail pages for the KP and K-70 that make no attempt to sell the camera.
I knew things were bad, just not this bad.
Steve
I don't really know how this stuff works, but in my mind (from a North America-centric stand point) I see Ricoh using Kerrick James, and other reps to create a real channel with periodic updates. Them on location, them setting up a specific shot.
Maybe they just need to cozy up more to the folks at DP Review and B and H and Adorama and give them some real inside info along with some instructional stuff on how to get the most of K mount cameras. Anyway, as you say, there is little English content out there, although they do have some reps who do amazing work with Pentax gear (see Mike Muizbelt and Kerrick James, among others).