What do you think of Tosh?

[Randall3]

Here’s what got me – I thought the info from ‘Tosh’ was excellent. But, I thought ‘Tosh’ was a real live person. When I passed the site on, I learned I had been fooled – adding a ‘personal touch’ Panasonic should have anticipated, but didn’t. People don’t like being fooled. Here endth the lesson…

[Mark Tyson]

I give Pana points for creativty. Think the whole thing is funny…why not.

Mark Tyson

[Häakon]

“I thought the info from ‘Tosh’ was excellent. But, I thought ‘Tosh’ was a real live person.”

Regardless of whether or not you knew ‘Tosh’ was real, the information you got still holds as excellent. You have already said it yourself. Who cares if he’s fictional or not? People get worked up over the dumbest things…

[Blub06]

You just hold on there buster. Our upset is real, you cant just cavalierly sluff it off as just so much crocodile tears.

I haven

[Luis Caffesse]

There is plenty of interesting discussion to be had concerning Panasonic’s marketing techniques without resorting to sweeping statements of other users character.

I just want to make sure this thread doesn’t devolve into personal attacks.
Animosity towards ‘Tosh’ is one thing…. I mean, he’s not real so he can’t exactly get offended.
🙂

[Jan Crittenden livingston]

Hi,

I thought I would chime in and see if I can add some breadth to Tosh’s character. It was the Ad Agency and several folks within Panasonic that came up with the idea because we knew that the HVX200 would be one of the most difficult to explain cameras because not only does it do so many formats but it also requires one to change a workflow. We needed an avenue for this camera to become understood and one idea was to develop an educational site that we could control the content. Forums like the CreativeCow are great but the content of the facts can become lost in the conversation sometimes and not everything that needs to be said gets said. A brochure can’t begin to say it all, and a DVD can’t say it all and so we thought about a blog, something that could naturally grow, be expected to grow. It took us quite a while to define it and give it a character.

Now depending on when you came in on it, it started with just a copyright on the bottom that clearly said it was a Panasonic Corporation of North America Website, and folks got upset. So we added an entry that was cheeky to talk about who he was, but even in his stuff about himself, it always said, I am only a blog. People still were upset, so we added brought to you by Panasonic, that still wasn’t enough, so we added the fictional character paragraph at the top. That seems to be working and we are now getting the questions and responses that we hoped to get. So now we can really start to grow the site.

The reason that we didn’t set it up as my blog, or someone real is because that person becomes the sought out person at a trade show. The web is a powerful communications medium that can make someone famous without you even realizing it. Some of you I know by your signature, like Chris or blub, but who is Chris? I use my full name and I have to say that while it was never my intent, I am famous. That part is too weird. I am a pretty private person and having so many know me is a little odd. So anyhow I have seen it happen more times than not, I will be introduced to a person by their local sales person, we will exchange business cards, have a few words, and then the following Monday, I will get an email from them and they won’t include their local person. A disconnect. Not good. We wanted an additive experience.

So we wanted a persona that could be a strong technical voice, present information clearly and that while they would become famous, they could never come between the relationship that our customers have already found in Panasonic.

We wanted him to seem real enough to talk to because we felt that adults working in a professional community wouldn’t talk to cartoon characters, they talk to people. Tosh as a person is not real, but his words are real. They are the words from a group of about 10 people within the marketing and engineering department, and he is fun. Makingall of these different people talk as one voice actually makes the information come through at a singular level and this is a good thing. One of our team is a regular speaker at SMPTE meetings and is a very strong engineer, you can find some posts by Steve Mahrer over on the VariCam Cow, another is Mike Bergeron, our camera engineer, he too posts occasionally on the VariCam Cow, or Phil Livingston, our senior technologist, VP and my husband. Some of the team are Japanese, some are management. At any rate if you knew these folks you would say that they all have their own writing style, and we wanted to keep the information to a level that anyone could understand it and have it sound like one voice. Obviously I too am one of the contributors.

Point is we wanted an avenue to share infomation as it comes out and to give it a place on the web where questions could be asked and be answered, and the thread can’t be hijacked by someone’s personal agenda. We have fun with Tosh, we blame Tosh for lots of things in the department, we try to get him in trouble, we leave notes for each other from Tosh, when somebody is looking for something, we say that we just saw Tosh walking down the hall with it, we have fun. 😉

One more thought on the matter,there is not a model for this being done before, at least not by a video equipment company in a technical arena, we could find it in the Home Economics arena but not video. Not to sound like a cliche, but it is an outside of the box idea, for a mega corporation. So we have had a bit of rocky start, and we have had our share of hate mail as we were not sure how much notice had to be there. There were a couple of times I felt like pulling the plug, my boss felt like pulling the plug, but then we would get a response from a reader that seemed like an indicator that said, this is why we did this and if we just keep tuning it, it could become the vision.

And finally, let me part with one last idea, why does marketing and education have to be always so serious? Can’t it be fun?

Best regards,

Jan

Jan Crittenden Livingston
Product Manager, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, AG-DVX100
Panasonic Broadcast & TV Systems

[Randall3]

“Can’t it be fun?”

Of course it can be! Tosh is conglomerate targeting ‘indies’. Slightly (or fashionably) irreverent but technically on the button. Bemis with a spec sheet. The Aflac Duck with a bigger vocabulary.

[Noah Kadner]

Jan-

I’m not convinced you would be sought out at the trade shows anymore than you are already if it were your personal blog. Face it- you’re a celebrity baby! Everyone in the 24p/HD world pretty much knows who you are already and the fact that you are willing to come out so willingly and openly about the gear is a huge part of why people appreciate and are loyal to Panasonic.

The idea of companies blogging about their product is something that’s been around for a while. For example the programmers over at Id have long blogged about where they are with Doom and Quake programming and when the game comes out- (they used to just call it their log.)

https://www.gamers.org/dEngine/quake/info/johnc-log-final.txt

Might be more down to earth and straightforward to just be yourself as you are on the boards rather than setup a fictional hipster indie character. Another way to go would be to have all the team folks at Panasonic who might be contributing content to the def blog now simply come out as themselves and share the blog. If you look at many blogs today- such as the ones from:

https://www.weblogsinc.com/

You’ll note that several different writers contribute to a single blog. This makes it a chorus of identified reporters- like a newspaper- rather than a single person writing every entry. Also as a corporate backgrounder, check out the blog for the upcoming movie version of Rent, which features entries by the actors, director and other crewpeople as an example of a company opening up their process:

https://www.sonypictures.com/movies/rent/blog/

If there’s one thing the video community shares where 24p and HiDef it’s healthy skepticism and apprehension. The way to assuage those concerns in the long run might be better achieved through openness and transparency rather than clever marketing. And blogs are often seen as the real deal rather than marketing or the company line. Panasonic’s unique lately has been as a straight shooter thanks in large part to your personal efforts among the internet communities. This blog could be another opportunity to increase that openness rather than diffuse it.

Noah

[Randall3]

‘Everyone in the 24p/HD world pretty much knows who you (Jan) are already and the fact that you are willing to come out so willingly and openly about the gear is a huge part of why people appreciate and are loyal to Panasonic.’

That’s a fact. You’ve done a much better job of getting the Panny message out, Jan, than ‘Tosh’ can ever do. Tosh is a fake, you’re not – that’s why HE’S counter-productive.

[Noah Kadner]

“Tosh is a fake, you’re not – that’s why HE’S counter-productive. ”

Exactly. Would you read a blog by Tony the Tiger talking about how Frosted Flakes are made and how tasty they are? Would you read the Maytag Repairman’s blog about what he does with his free time? Probably not for any serious purposes.

-Noah