Canon is further developing its direct-to-consumer strategy with a Canon Rewards Club, offering ‘awesome discounts, unique offers and special promotions’ to members of a range of professional associations.
The Australian Association of Architects and the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons are among the professional bodies currently participating.
‘As a member of the Australian Architecture Association you will be entitled to join the Canon Rewards Club, which will offers AAA members the opportunity to discover a range of unique offers from Canon Australia,’ states the Architects website.
Discounts are across the Canon camera, lens, prints and ink range and are supported by free delivery and the Canon Store ’14-Day Piece of Mind’ offer.
Membership of the Canon Rewards Club is also open to the newly-minted ‘Clique Photography Association’, Canon’s joint promotion with Fairfax Publishing.
The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald are conducting a membership drive for Clique, which from next January will run monthly photo challenges for Clique members with the incentive of being published in the Sydney and Melbourne daily newspapers and online editions. At the end of the year a Clique ‘amateur photographer of the year’ will be named.
Clique will also offer seminars and workshops via The Canon Academy, Canon’s amateur photography education business, and has a standing offer of 12 percent discount on orders from Photo Pico, Canon’s consumer photo printing business.
Digital Camera Warehouse and Adobe are also partners in the Clique Photography Association initiative. Membership is $50, or $25 for Fairfax subscribers.
Bloody L!
Canon continues to promote hard on price in its Canon Store email promotions. This week’s special is $300 off a large range of selected lenses, which includes a number of high-end L-series models.
Yet when outlining the scope of the Canon Store at launch in late 2011, Canon director Jason McLean told a PMA retailers’ meeting in Sydney; ‘We will expand the range at some time in the future. But with hand on heart I couldn’t see us selling L series lenses – we don’t have a mass distribution strategy on that.’
Negative comments on this lens promotion on the Canon Facebook page illustrate the pressure Canon is under as a retailer to further reduce its prices:
– Quick research shows the prices from your local camera store are still cheaper. It’s good to have an online channel, but if its always dearer than retail, what’s the point?
– I have to agree with Peter, it doesn’t take more than a couple of minutes to find the lenses significantly cheaper than your sale price.
– …But honestly, grey import is better than local distribution. Canon quality is alright I think, a year without malfunction is pretty likely.
– Just an example of price differences between Canon online and normal retail – 24-105mm f4 – Canon “special price” = $1,359. Price at DigiDirect (without any haggling) – $967. It’s a full legit Canon dealer (not grey importer). Almost $400 difference. Time to apply pencil sharper again Canon…
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