Camera segment aims for bright holiday season

Drug Store News,  Sept 27, 1999  by Allene Symons

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Memory-making on Dec. 31, 1999, gift solutions for kids, teens and popularity-seeking 'tweens, and maybe a new zoom model to upgrade the family camera--all these prospects and more should light up sales in the photo category this holiday season. New photo products, services and campaigns--many just now hitting the shelves or airwaves--are well-positioned this quarter to make cameras and film a must-have at any fun activity. This includes camera-toting moms who manage the family scrapbook; cameras also serve as a popularity prop for teen and 'tween-age girls (like, you know, the ones who saw "Titanic" seven times).

Advanced Photo Systems are expected to achieve greater household penetration and should be helped by programs such as Eastman Kodak's Advantix Gift Box promotion, packed with value-added goodies. And digital cameras will be making their way into the holiday camera assortment at some--but not all--drug chain stores.

How to capture Y2K

What makes this year unusual is a photo opportunity not going on in some remote Olympic stadium, but in living rooms, hotels and restaurants around the world--the upcoming eve of the new millennium. A recent Polaroid survey found that, to celebrate the historic event, respondents ranked the following items in order of importance: a television, camera and then a watch or clock, followed by other celebration essentials, such as champagne.

Agfa is tying in year 2000 celebrations with end of the century price cuts for retailers and millennium consumer sweepstakes. Polaroid is covering both hot holiday '99 bases--midnight 2000 and the rising tide of 'tweens ages nine to 15. It is rolling out a sleek new model called the JoyCam for adults (including younger adults ages 18 to 24), which, along with other Polaroid instant cameras, will be promoted with a "12:01" campaign (named for the minute after midnight, when you can see your finished print). Polaroid also will launch an instant camera that creates small photos, the i-Zone Instant Pocket Camera, which gives the 'tween set their own personal version of a photo sticker booth to take and share pictures of friends.

Picture sharing will be a key driver of photo marketing in the new millennium. Call it picture connectivity, a trend expected to take a big leap ahead next month when Kodak rolls out the national version of its venture with AOL, "You've Got Pictures," (which now is being tested in Orlando, Fla., Tampa, Fla., and Cleveland). When that happens, 17 million AOL subscribers will be able to e-mail images to friends and family on embedded software that its sponsors claim will be a better way to e-mail photos than anything popularly available.

Snapping kids and 'tweens

A new focus in fourth quarter photo marketing is 'tween-age girls, with upcoming campaigns for the Kodak Max one-time-use camera with flash and Polaroid i-Zone both designed to hit the mark with TV advertising slated for such prime 'tween-age slots as WB's "Dawson's Creek" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." "Girls are more photo active, but boys have a relatively developed photo-taking habit. They just don't like to talk about it as much," said Greg Johnson, manager of strategic targeting for Eastman Kodak. (For more, see story on page 49.)

Other products for kids and young people--some might be called "for all ages," but with a youthful slant--include Polaroid's instant one-time-use camera, Popshots, introduced earlier this year. Minolta's Vectis Xtreem GX-4 APS camera has earned space in drug chain camera sets in the past couple of years, especially now that more drug operators have carved out larger destination photo departments.

Anchored by on-site, staffed photo labs, an offshoot of this category growth is increased sales of framed photos and photo gifts. Kodak recently announced a way to enhance photo gift sales with its Photo Greeting and Gifts online tool for retailers, which allows retailers to download Web-ready html pages they can place on their Web sites to boost in-store sales of holiday photo greetings and gifts.

Photo gifts galore

Start with stocking stuffers. This holiday season, drug chains are primed to enjoy another star performance from increasingly popular one-time-use cameras both in 35mm--which continue to grow in double-digit units every year--and APS versions. This year, the figures are likely to include an even higher number of APS onetime-use cameras.

Fuji's vice president of marketing, Matt Knickerbocker, noted that studies show not only that a lot of children use one-time-use cameras, but also that 70 percent of purchasers of OTUCs are women.

"The growth rate is pheonomenal," Knickerbocker said. "One reason is if a person has a camera slung around his or her neck--say at a party--people say they don't feel they are part of the gathering, but are more like an official journalist." This way, though, the shutterbug can keep an OTUC in a pocket and still be part of the party.