Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/03/15
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 02:53 PM 3/15/2000 -0000, Larry Kopitnik wrote: >It's marketing, pure and simple. Pay someone for the right to use a name >and sell more product because of the resevoir of good will that name brings >to the product. Michael Jordan's name (Air Jordans) on Nike shoes. >Voigtlander's name on Cosina cameras. It's all the same. > Well, no, it really isn't. Michael Jordan is still alive and still active. But, now, imagine that Michael Jordan dies, after telling his family he does NOT want his name used in further endorsements. Thereupon, they begin selling his name to endorse anything and everything. Those who respect Michael Jordan might feel his wishes over-rode the legalities of this by quite a bit. (And the Voigtlander family didn't want their name used on outside lenses, I am certain: they made all sorts of restrictions on the use of the name when they sold to Schering in '25. Such restrictions were, however, wiped out by the Rollei Fototechnik bankruptcy in 1979. Obviously, the family could not foresee that a successor to the successor to their company would go belly-up 54 years later.) That is part one. Part two is that of instituional pride. Cosina has produced decent lenses at a more-than-decent price. Instead of hiding behind the skirts of a name which has not produced a camera-lens in a quarter-century, why not take some pride in one's work, and label the lenses with the actual name of the company producing them? When I file a legal pleading, I don't sign some other attorney's name to it -- sign my own. Right or wrong, it is my pleading, and I take responsibility and pride in my product. Part three has already been revealed on several photo lists, where relatively knowledgeable collectors have commented that, "Gee! My old Prominent had great lenses. Bet these NEW Voigtlander lenses are even better!" Now, the Cosina lenses might well be better than the old Prominent lenses, but there is no design nexus at all -- they are completely different lens families produced by completely different designers a half-century, and a half of the world, apart. Cosina, by calling the new lenses "Voigtlander" skirts dangerously close to deceptive advertising. Part four is that this analysis works as well for, say, Canon or Honda as it does for Voigtlander or Argus (and, yes, I was offended when some marketing firm started selling Chinese copies of some Japanese camera in the US under the Argus label a decade back). If Rollei started making a line of lenses and called them "Miranda", I'd be equally appalled and for identical reasons. 'Nuf said. Time we got back to cameras and photography. Discussing this is a bit like discussing religion: you either understand why such labelling is an improper and immoral act on Cosina's part, or you don't. Marc msmall@roanoke.infi.net FAX: +540/343-7315 Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!