Marketing Fools Rule

As with so many things these days its the guys in marketing that call the shots, even though they know nothing about things. And this is what seems to have happened with the official promotional video for the new Nikon D800, produced for Nikon Thailand for the launch in Bangkok (a very boring video which shows why such events are best missed.) The people who made the video just went and found some nice footage to use, just unfortunate that at least some of it wasn’t even shot on Nikon, and I doubt in any was actually shot on a D800.

One of the clips used in the video came from Norwegian landscape photographer Terje Sørgjerd, who notes on his Facebook page that he is sponsored by Canon and uses a Canon 5DII. According to the comments there, the promo also contained work taken from a Red Bull snowboarding movie – which again did not use Nikon – as well as some produced on a Samsung NX10.

Nikon have apparently said they will apologise to the photographer and state that the video was not produced by them but made by an external company, though that is hardly an excuse as they used it.  They have also apparently agreed to pay Sørgjerd twice the normal fee for the use, though that seems rather low given what has happened. But on his Facebook page he says that Nikon “have taken every step to have the video removed, and will do everything possible to avoid this from happening again in the future. This matter is now fully resolved between the two of us“.

Of course it has given Sørgjerd a great deal of free publicity – including this mention here, as well as some extra but rather negative publicity for Nikon. The D800 should sell on its merits, and promoting it with images produced on other cameras seems entirely dishonest, though apparently such practices are not unusual in advertising. I remember being told by a photographer many years ago that his pictures that were used in the UK advertising campaign for a new Japanese camera had actually been taken on a Nikon and not on the make being advertised.

Nikon Rumours doesn’t so far as I know have any video shot with the D800, but they do have some genuinely made with other Nikon cameras including the D700,  pretty clever as it doesn’t have a video mode, along with some taken with other Nikons. But I’m still waiting for proper reviews to tell me if the D800 is a body worth considering as a (larger format) replacement for my ailing D300. Perhaps Nikon will come out with the D400 some time this year – it has been rumoured as imminent since mid-2009, though as yet there is not even any agreement between the rumour-mongers as to whether it will be DX or FX!

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.