So I went down to Bob’s office–that guy in marketing who does a pretty good job selling out stuff. I said, “Hey Bob, how do we sell these things?” He asked me which one this one was. I replied, “It’s the under $100 one all the nice features.”

He replied, “oh, the one we make the customer either buy xd memory or more expensive micro-sd cards for?”

“yeah, but it has 12mp and a cool 5x optical zoom”, I retorted.

“Well if you could take decent pictures at any other time than high noon in a land where time stands still, those would be nice features”, he snorted.

Now I think he was making fun of the fact that it’s easy to get blurry grainy pictures from the camera, but you’re not going to get optical image stabilization or a really good lense at this price (yeah, you get digital image stabilization, but don’t let that fool you).

I tried to think of a come back, but before I could he continued: “There’s just nothing to make it stand out in a crowd. The features don’t sound any different than anyone else. And it looks right out of 1995–and for me, 1995 wasn’t a year I want memories from.”

Frustrated, I resorted to name-calling, “Ok, Mr. Smarty-Pants, how do we sell this thing then???”

He answered, “It’s all about perceived value. Let’s throw in a storage box that costs us all of a dollar. Then we’ll throw in a case, which (with the current slave labor conversion factor) also costs us about a dollar.”

“Hmm,” I said, “That doesn’t sound bad, but why would you buy a box with a camera?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he answered, “They add perceived value. In fact, let’s throw in a box of crayons and 6 months of free coloring book prints!”

I got a little scared as I saw costs addings up. “Slow down buddy, can we really afford to include that?”, I asked.

“Don’t worry,” he replied. “The prints are ones you print on your computer. Not only that, but they normally come free with a 64 pack of crayons!!! It’s perceived value at its best! And your camera will come up when people search for 64 crayons.”

Wow, that Bob in marketing is either a genius, or an idiot. But, I’ll try anything once. So here’s your camera, box, case, and crayons. It may only be an average camera at a good price point, but look at all the crap you get with it!

edit 12/13/09: accidently put digital zoom where it should have been optical. Thanks Jack Olmstead!
Rating: 4 / 5