Pentax manifesto.

Regular readers (it seems I have some) may have picked up that (a) I use Pentax cameras and (b) I like the edgy cartoons which Hugh Macleod draws (like this rude one), and we've unofficially adopted his "Blue monster" inside Microsoft. One of the interesting themes he had was around manifestos. I've linked to at least one.

Pentax are exhibiting at the PMA show this week and one of the people who saw them posted their "manifesto" which I picked up via a post on the OK1000 blog.

"You're a Pentaxian. A loyalist. A diehard. You once carried a K1000 around with you everywhere, only reluctantly setting it down to take the occasional shower. You tell your kids bedtime stories about those heady days when the camera simply known as "the Pentax" was the best-selling SLR made. You don't spend countless hours pixel-peeping. You just take pictures. And while you may be tempted, on occasion, to turn to a stranger on an elevator and say, "the best auto-focus SLR lens ever amde is the Pentax 31mm F/1.8," you'd really rather be using your equipment than talking about it. Pentax understands that cameras don't take pictures, photographers do. Our new digital SLRs are the result of our listening to Pentaxians and delivering tools for true photography lovers. These cameras are already creating many more loyalists. So the question is: can these newcomers count themselves among the diehards? hey, we're Pentaxians, not photography snobs. Welcome to our club."

It's getting a lot of attention and praise from Pentax owners. I've mentioned that their marketing VP keeps a blog, and engaging in conversations with customers and talking about the spirit of the company - and the beliefs they share with the customer is a good thing. They could have been reading Hugh

Update: Ned, Pentax's marketing VP has published some of these materials.

I love this one - OCR'd from his photo by One-Note

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 DLSRS 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 that 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 k1od. 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.

Technorati tags: Pentax