Canon Break 'Boundaries' with Radical Brand Revamp

"Canon had looked scary to some people. Ask a casual camera user and they're like 'OMG, if i pick up a Canon I'll break it. I wouldn't know what to press, it's terrifying!' Whereas this new campaign says 'why not take a picture, experiment, play with it?'

So said VCCP executive creative director Darren Bailes when we spoke in the run-up to the launch of Live for the Story, a radical brand revamp for Canon launching with Boundaries, a Megaforce-directed ad for Riff Raff Films [above].

I also asked Lee Bonniface, senior director, CIG Marketing for Canon Europe to sum up this new look in a minute. He said, "basically, we want to enable people to tell the story of their lives."

Despite Lee being able to describe it in only five of the 60 seconds I allotted him like a PR pro, there is a lot to this new campaign. First and foremost, there is Boundaries. In the ad, a boy grows from infancy to adulthood through a series of life moments, with his path through life illuminated by light form above. As his life expands, the light too expands, leading to a very camera ad moment as he runs alongside galloping horses.

Bailes took me through it in more detail. "When you're born, your world is tiny, for a while it's a cot that you sleep in and a bit of a bedroom," he explains. "Bit by bit as your grow your world, it's almost like another light goes on the world - oooh, the world is that big now, oooh I can go down the street, I get a bike like the kid does [in the ad], you ride down the street ... and bit by bit your world gets bigger and more things happened to you, you meet a new girlfriend or boyfriend, you end up in hospital etc."

Plus, as Bonniface adds, " there's the whole subtle play on photography being about light as well."

There is far more to the campaign than just Boundaries, however. What Live for the Story is is a total brand rethink, seeing the brand move to what Bailes calls "championing stories not a high end product." Part of this is a new print campaign, featuring images that seem to talk of the stories behind them rather than technical perfection - and also, crucially, not featuring the camera themselves.

Bonniface: "these are call to actions to customers. They're basically just telling you to tell stories. They're not telling you you need a camera to tell them."

"That comers through the whole customer journey. We've got products to support you but we don't need to flog them to you, we need to engage with you to build that relationship and connection. Then people will engage with Canon."

Although this is not the first time Canon haven't featured a piece of their tech in their ads, (for example, 2014's Gladiator Football [above] did not) the idea that if you create a culture of quality image-making your customers will come to you is a new, and risky, one. However, as Bailes noted, it has a benefit: "this positioning should never run out becuase we're always living our lives and always telling stories."

The positioning may be timeless, but it begins with a very timely campaign feature; an influencer marketing deal with actress, singer, model (and yes, daughter of Lenny) Zoë Kravitz.

"We needed someone who believed in photography," explained Bonniface on the choice of Kravitz, "Which she does. We could have chosen a young professional photographer but it isn't about that - it's about someone going through some great stories in her life and she wants to tell them. And that's whats she does."

Again, an interesting, risky strategy - choosing someone Instagram-famous to sell your traditional camera brand. Bonniface explained how Bailes showed him the power of this approach/talked him into it, "Darren's big thing was 'it's got to feel uncomfortable enough to make people reappraise the brand." Part of this was embracing Instagram as a an Instafriend not an Instafoe.

Bailes sums it up: "We're crazy!"

But seriously: "Traditionally they would have been our enemy, we would see them as taking away our business. But it's not: the more people that are taking pictures the better, and bit by bit we'll befriend them. People following Zoë on Instagram won't want a camera maybe for the next 4 or 5 years, but maybe in 5 or 6 years when they've grown up a bit and want something more meaningful we'll be there for them,  we'll have befriended them and will be part of their repertoire of brands."

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