After almost 30 years, Canon is ending the “Kiss” branding in Japan
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As someone who lives in the USA, I have always found the "Kiss" branding in the Japanese market to be a bit strange. I won't miss the USA Rebel branding either.
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It hasn't turned out to be a problem in practice but I think Canon actually had a mount called the RF in the 50s or 60s?
It definitely had an FD-mount camera called the EF AND one called the EF-M, and replaced the FD mount with the EF mount, and later introduced an EF-M mount, which is simply silly.
Ditto F-1 and "New F-1."
Japanese also kind of play this game naming highways and the like: there's a highway officially called the "previously Meiji Highway," "previously Coastal Highway" and so on.
Japanese keyboard instrument manufacturer Korg has reused a couple names twice, I think Triton comes to mind for two utterly different keyboards, one around 1980, one around 2000. They also had two organs named CX-3, an analog-electronic one and a digital one.
Eden made about four bass guitar amps called World Tour 800, and Roland made about seven versions of the guitar amp called JC-120. It's not like there's a massive shortage of three-digit numerals, why not just call them the 800, 801, 802, 803, etc.?
An interesting thing is that most car makers reuse a model name (Corolla, Mustang) for many generations of cars, but Ferrari doesn't. The F430 is the F430 of 2002-2008 or whatever. They're all the same car.
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I haven't seen any mention of this in the discussion but I THINK the reasoning behind this was to discourage grey-market imports.
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What was the point of having different brands / model names in different regions? Warranty or service or something else?
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Maybe Canon should have tried combining their name badges? Or not, since it's been done. Both as a product:
...and as a concept. I believe I already referenced that ancient chronology from a very, very distant universal locale.
...and as a concept. I believe I already referenced that ancient chronology from a very, very distant universal locale.
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I THINK the reasoning behind this was to discourage grey-market imports.
Market #1 might be more competitive, or be in a recession, and they want to lower prices in that market to sell goods they've already imported and warehoused. But market #2 has a good economy and they can sell their inventory even at a much better profit margin. In this case they do not want people to import cameras from market #1 to #2. So if market #1 goods have a different name, consumers in market #2 aren't likely to consider it to be a comparable good, and won't buy it.
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Marketing of the Kiss series in Japan has always been strongly focused on young women making snapshots of family and friends:
https://cweb.canon.jp/eos/special/kisssp/
It's possible that Canon Japan decided to rethink their marketing focus. It's also possible that entry-level camera sales volumes have declined to the point where it no longer makes economic sense to split production into three different brandings of the same products. Those aren't mutually exclusive - they could both be true.
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Yeah, the names are doubtless targeting a perceived national psyche. In Japan, Thailand and other parts of the far east, the name "kiss" might invoke the notion of cuteness, well suited to the young female market. In the US, the name "rebel" could invoke feelings of adventurism. Canon must think Europeans are boring, and only interested in acronyms and numbers!
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From a marketing standpoint, Japan and the US can be viewed as large (they and China are the largest single-country markets for cameras) and relatively homogenous (as in, they are single countries). Europe and the rest of the world are a mix of cultures that would likely require different targeted marketing approaches. Even though today the EU is a larger market than the US, when the Kiss and Rebel nameplates launched the EU hadn't yet been formed, and still the EU is far from a homogeneous market.
IMO, the suggestion that these nameplates are intended to reduce gray marketing is reading too much into it. Kiss and Rebel were marketing terms.
Andre Agassi And The Infamous Canon Commercial
When a phrase you said in an advertisement goes viral you will know how Andre Agassi felt. Check out what happened to him and how he dealt with it.
www.essentiallysports.com
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I think that the purpose of different names was initially to reduce grey marketing - an American male would I think definitely prefer to pay full whack for a "Rebel" rather than save a few dollars and have the humiliation of having "Kiss" plastered across the front of his camera. I agree that the non-homogenous nature of Europe could be a reason why acronyms are used instead of names. The *choice* of the actual names "Kiss" and "Rebel" was I think as I stated, i.e. based on perceptions of the national psyche of Japan and the US.From a marketing standpoint, Japan and the US can be viewed as large (they and China are the largest single-country markets for cameras) and relatively homogenous (as in, they are single countries). Europe and the rest of the world are a mix of cultures that would likely require different targeted marketing approaches. Even though today the EU is a larger market than the US, when the Kiss and Rebel nameplates launched the EU hadn't yet been formed, and still the EU is far from a homogeneous market.
IMO, the suggestion that these nameplates are intended to reduce gray marketing is reading too much into it. Kiss and Rebel were marketing terms.
Andre Agassi And The Infamous Canon Commercial
When a phrase you said in an advertisement goes viral you will know how Andre Agassi felt. Check out what happened to him and how he dealt with it.www.essentiallysports.com
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