Image by Mark Matthews @markmimage
Seems that a new guerrilla campaign by Olympus in Australia is talking shit about the “rubbish” photos from your camera phone.
“If you’re camera also sends text messages, that will explain why your photos are rubbish.”
Plaques in select Aussie cities bearing the above slogan have been pasted to the street and other urban environs, with the url GetARealCamera.com linking to Olympus. Personally, the message bugs me, but it’s pretty damn clever — made me look twice and type in the url. …
[thx @MarkMImage for the tip & sending in that image!]
i now see why no one on the street holds a olympus camera…
I saw one of those ads in Melbourne and I was going to look up the url! It made me look twice as well, hehe
Judging by the number of responses above, I’d say their campaign is working. I can’t see anyone above swayed either way (the Olympus haters still hate ’em) buuuuut…
…everyone is now talking about Olympus. And if their POS(??) dinky camera is $10 cheaper than the competition, my gran will buy it!
The ad is successful if you consider how many people are talking about it on this blog alone. I do think its in the best interest of Olympus in the long run to stop using messages like this.
The camera is simply a paint brush and the better they get the more like a paint brush a camera becomes. If you think about the great painters no one asks what kind of paint brush they use. The topic never comes up but with photographers so often it becomes a discussion of gear.
Maybe the topic of gear comes up so often because photography has been such a mens club for years but perhaps its also because photography is still a very young art.
I shot many many covers with an Olympus E1 back in 2005-2006 and never got a complaint that it was only 5meg files. My vision is what I sell, my camera is just a box I manipulate to communicate my vision.
With professional photographers more and more using small cameras to create their work I look forward to the day when we look at the camera as a paint brush.
Props to the marketing team who put together the campaign. Clever and quite a success, if you ask me. I’m sure that many who’ve blasted Olympus here have probably never even touched one. FWIW, I think they do make some nice equipment. For the record, I’m a Nikon shooter, but also love taking pics with my iPhone. I’m a firm believer a good shooter can create beautiful imagery with any kind of camera. My 2 cents…