Gavin Greenwalt
Well-known member
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- Dec 29, 2006
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I don't think any print ads are going to change anyone's minds.
"RED is unreliable and expensive! Oh wait, what's that, an ad in American Cinematographer!? Wow I must have heard wrong. No company could ever buy ads if their product was perfect!"
You can't advertise away ignorance in conventional marketing. And for those who are used to working with Alexa and have tested Red (most DPs and directors) it's useless to try and change their mind through advertising. "I had a Red drop frames on my last shoot, but now that I saw that print ad maybe it won't." or "I really like the image from an Alexa and it's really easy to use, but now that I've seen an ad in a magazine I realize that I was mistaken and it's actually slower and more difficult."
I'm not saying RED is any of those things. I'm just saying that advertising isn't going to do a whole lot of good in my opinion to change people's minds. Exposure isn't Red's problem, except maybe to still photographers. What Red does need is quotes from *producers* saying that their film/commercial was a breeze with Epic. I still hear people saying that the producers for Pirates wanted to switch cameras because it was costing them too much money. I've never heard a producer say that, but it's part of the rumor mill. To me that's more damaging than anything. Red needs to aggressively demonstrate that their cameras not only shot films--but that everybody was happy with the cameras in the process. I've used tools that I delivered great results with--that I was ready to punt off a cliff half way through but had to stick with it. The perfect combination is a library of really great projects that use your tools and quotes from all the departments praising how much they legitimately valued the choice.
Cebas had this problem a couple years ago. Their products were used extensively on 2012... but everything I heard among my peers was that it was the *wrong* choice for the film and that 2012 was delivered on time *in spite of Cebas' renderer* not because of it. 2012 went from in my opinion the greatest advertisement someone could ask for to the worst advertisement possible because of that discussion.
"RED is unreliable and expensive! Oh wait, what's that, an ad in American Cinematographer!? Wow I must have heard wrong. No company could ever buy ads if their product was perfect!"
You can't advertise away ignorance in conventional marketing. And for those who are used to working with Alexa and have tested Red (most DPs and directors) it's useless to try and change their mind through advertising. "I had a Red drop frames on my last shoot, but now that I saw that print ad maybe it won't." or "I really like the image from an Alexa and it's really easy to use, but now that I've seen an ad in a magazine I realize that I was mistaken and it's actually slower and more difficult."
I'm not saying RED is any of those things. I'm just saying that advertising isn't going to do a whole lot of good in my opinion to change people's minds. Exposure isn't Red's problem, except maybe to still photographers. What Red does need is quotes from *producers* saying that their film/commercial was a breeze with Epic. I still hear people saying that the producers for Pirates wanted to switch cameras because it was costing them too much money. I've never heard a producer say that, but it's part of the rumor mill. To me that's more damaging than anything. Red needs to aggressively demonstrate that their cameras not only shot films--but that everybody was happy with the cameras in the process. I've used tools that I delivered great results with--that I was ready to punt off a cliff half way through but had to stick with it. The perfect combination is a library of really great projects that use your tools and quotes from all the departments praising how much they legitimately valued the choice.
Cebas had this problem a couple years ago. Their products were used extensively on 2012... but everything I heard among my peers was that it was the *wrong* choice for the film and that 2012 was delivered on time *in spite of Cebas' renderer* not because of it. 2012 went from in my opinion the greatest advertisement someone could ask for to the worst advertisement possible because of that discussion.
