D300s Says First Goodbye

(news & commentary)

NikonUSA has moved the D300s DSLR from the active camera list to the archived camera list. A quick browse of the other Nikon subsidiaries doesn’t show any others that have removed the D300s from their active listings, though, including Nikon’s corporate Imaging site. Update: Nikon Canada has archived the D300s, as well.

One would conclude from this that NikonUSA no longer has any inventory of the D300s and has no chance of getting new inventory. So, last call on the D300s folks. I’m moving the D300s out of my “current camera” list to the “older camera” listings. 

Meanwhile, NikonUSA’s insert flyers have changed, too. Insert flyers are the standalone brochures you find stuffed into your newspaper, often on weekends. The old flyers used to be mostly wall to wall camera listings with tables of features and Instant Rebate pricing emphasized. The new brochures have eight full page photos that attempt to show you what the cameras in question might do for you. 

This is an approach I’ve been suggesting for awhile: you really have to tell people what the product will do for them, not just spout numbers and acronyms at them. The photos Nikon picked are good, and in a number of cases are subtly saying “you can’t do this with your smartphone.” I hope this works for them, as it’s a better marketing approach, IMHO.

The brochure I got in my paper this morning is a Nikon/Best Buy coop flyer. So it’s the basic Nikon brochure with some extra Best Buy branding in it. Here’s another interesting takeaway: “Black available in store and at BestBuy.com, Red and Gray available at BestBuy.com.” The dealer push back on all those colored cameras is gaining momentum: even BestBuy just can’t afford to stock them in stores. As I noted when Pentax kicked off this color nonsense, it was faddish and destined to fail. Well, it’s starting to fail.

Finally, I wonder how BestBuy and the other stores feel about Nikon using dpreview Silver and Gold star review ratings in the brochure? dpreview is owned by Amazon, which is a competitor to all those other stores, after all. 

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