An interesting discussion emerged under yesterday's post about Panasonic's insipid subway ad for its Lumix camera.  

Recall, they say: "If it's got a ringtone, it's not a camera." 

It's irritating in so many ways.  

1. It's simply not true, under any reasonable definition of "camera."  

2. As some have said, it's elitist, and that may be their intention. But the NYC subway is not a very elite environment. I expect to see ads for ambulance chasers and hemorrhoid medicine on the subway. Night school (so you can get a raise and move to Manhattan and stop taking the subway to Brooklyn?). There aren't many environments as proletarian as the NYC subway. 

3. As a camera user, the ad makes me angry -- because no one is making the product I want to buy. I want a high quality, small camera like the Canon I carry in my knapsack pocket, with the communication capability of my Droid and the user interface of my iPhone. I've wanted this product since 2007 when I saw how easy the iPhone is. Three years later I want so much more. But we're stuck with thinking like Panasonic's. They think they know better than we do, they can tell us what is and isn't a camera. Either you anticipate all our needs, get real responsive or get out of the way. 

4. It violates the prime directive of marketing -- the customer is always right. If you're going to tell me I'm wrong, you'd better convince me very quickly or I'm going to think you're an idiot and an asshole.  

5. I don't care about Panasonic. I never intend to buy one of their cameras. But if instead they ran an ad for the product I want, I'd line up outside their store and plunk down the money a month in advance and overpay by a factor of 3 if they said, instead -- "We believe all cameras should have ringtones." 

6. All it takes to make them toast is for Apple to make a deal with Canon or Google to convince Nikon to bake in Android. How much you want to bet both things are happening?  

7. Basically I don't like the ad because it reeks of "We know better." I think the sub-text of the ad could be "We're dumb fucks." They pay money to tell me that! Oy!! Oy!! Oy!!