For all of us who whine about the marketing department at Leica they seem to have stepped up to the plate. In the Nov/Dec Nat'l Geo Adventure magazine there is a 1/2 page advert featuring the Minilux zoom and Trinovid binos. Obliously it is directed at travelers but what the heck, it sure suprised me. Why am I so bent on Leice marketing, who knows, who cares? Have fun shooting!

-- Brooks (Bvonarx@home.com), November 11, 2001

Answers

In quite a few german photomagazines (not only in LF) you see LEICA adverds for the M6 and the R8 these days. Normally connected even with an instalment offer This was not so a year ago or so.

As with the MINILUX: this advertisement could perhaps mean, there is a new model in thge pipeline. Even in the old LEITZ days I can remember advertisment offensives to boost some sales and then came an new product.

Letīs hope for a similar mechanism here.

Best wishers

-- K. G. Wolf (k.g.wolf@web.de), November 11, 2001.

Brooks,

Speaking as somebody who has been in the advertising for many years I would like to say there are several reasons for small companies like Leica to NOT do much advertising. The biggest reason would be the cost, a hypothetical example of magazine advertising would be: Lets use a monthly photo magazine with a 300,000 circulation and you place a 1/2 page 4-color ad for a 12-time insertion. Lets be generous to Leica and say each ad will only cost $15,000 each, multiply times 12 = $180,000. OK if you start a national ad campaign you cannot do just one magazine so multiply that $180,000 times 6 magazines = $1,080,000. This is probably a low figure. So for a small manufacturer that is apparently selling their product at capacity that is a hefty expense. Leica is probably a case where word of mouth and reputation is doing the job for them. There are many more ways that Leica could market their product but the cost does not end with the high advertising cost, they would have to add personnell to their in-house marketing to coordinate the advertising with the ad agency (you can also ad 25% (on top of the $1,080,000) for creative that the ad agency will charge you. Then in anticipation of increased sales from the advertising they would have to expand factory capacity. Advertising is not as simple as it looks.

-- Steve LeHuray (icommag@toad.net), November 11, 2001.

Steve, you are certainly correct, but there's another factor that still influences Leica marketing, despite all internationalisation of human resources and modern management: the old German conviction that a good product has to sell itself by being technically outstanding. Reklame [obsolescent for 'advertising'], ugh, you need that only if your product is inferior, don't you? In other words, if you advertise you're saying others are better. Get that out of German minds...

-- Oliver Schrinner (piraya@hispavista.com), November 12, 2001.

Steve is, of course, correct. They just do not have the resources to advertise widely. I saw an ad in the UK Practical Photography magazine recently for the R8 I think.

-- Robin Smith (smith_robin@hotmail.com), November 12, 2001.