Pentax Life

Those luckies who’s been at PMA saw the new Pentax branding campaign and probably were able to get the T-shirt at the Pentax booth with the words “I’m a Pentaxian. A loyalist. A diehard…” on it. For all others Ned Bunnell has posted the new ads in his blog.

On the bus:

You can’t put more than six words on a bus and expect people to read it. You can’t build a digital SLR with shake reduction housed in the body of the camera that works with 24 million existing Pentax lenses. You can’t put a man on the Moon. You can’t make a camera that’s both technically advanced and intuitive. You can’t make a seies of absurdly small lenses and call them “pancakes.” You can’t weatherproof an SLR with 72 seals to keep moisture, dust and everything else out. You can’t build a city in the middle of the desert. You can’t buy a digital SLR from anyone other than the big two.

Two-page print:

We’re lousy at marketing. Never been much for self-promotion. Here’s the thing: we’re a bunch of photography nerds. We’d rather be using our cameras than blathering on about them. And we’re always working to make them better. What’s that marketing word everyone uses? Innovation? Yeah, that applies to us. Although we’d prefer a word that’s more, well, innovative. Of course, to us innovation means building DSLRs with in-camera shake reduction that’s compatible with 24 million existing Pentax lenses. No marketing-obsessed corporate bean counter is going to green light this program. But despite our lack of horn tooting, our cameras always seem to find their way to the people we make them for. The K1000 was the best-selling SLR ever (toot!). And people are already talking about the K100D and K10D. We hear that’s called “Buzz.” Well, given that we’ve just talked about ourselves way more than we ever have in our lives, we’re going to get back to making cameras now. Happy shooting.