Thoughts about Nikon’s “Fake Plane” Saga

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Recently came across this article on Facebook, and it’s turning out to be proof that Social media strategies can often yield suprising results…

Nikon Awards Prize to Badly ‘Shopped Photo, Hilarity Ensues

“Nikon Singapore posted an announcement on its Facebook page yesterday, congratulating a photographer named Chay Yu Wei for capturing a perfect shot of an airplane framed by a ladder in Chinatown.

Photographers quickly pointed out that the photo is clearly the result of editing, and sarcastic comments soon flooded the post.”

What are all of your opinions on this case? In my opinion, on the surface, Nikon has been discredited, and Nikon has generated a high level of negative publicity for not being able to discern a badly photoshopped photo. However, on hindsight, if the picture was a genuine, perfect shot – would it have generated that much public scrutiny?

Could bad publicity be better than no publicity at all? I’m still going to buy a Nikon camera for its long-running reputation for being a high quality DSLR manufacturer…

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De Zhong

One response to “Thoughts about Nikon’s “Fake Plane” Saga”

  1. KyuJin SHIM Avatar
    KyuJin SHIM

    I think, in some cases, negative publicity is better than nothing, especially when you are a start-up or challenger in the market. You need exposure anyway so sometimes noise marketing would work.
    Here is one example of historical noise marketing of Burger King… Whopper sacrifice campaign is still debatable.. some think it was a failure yet some think it was really a big success and milestone in marketing history… no matter what, I think Burger King did what they intended to do and were supposed to do… creating exposure, awareness, publicity… going viral…

    What did Nikon get from this debate? Not so much I guess…
    DSLR camera is a very highly involved product category and brand community is really important in running their business.
    I think as you said, Nikon’s blog content was obviously discredited. The way blog content is operated and mediated by the Nikon would be received badly by other bloggers and community members. Yet, as we already have learnt from the assigned reading on brand journalism, poor credibility of content does not necessarily relate to decrease in sales. And surely, it seems that consumers like you, especially in high involvement product category, tend to rely on their own discretion about the reliability of the product based on peer review and their own search for the product and company, not affected by brand journalism and content credibility when it comes to make purchasing decisions…

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