Wrapping up Panasonic

The Panasonic blogger tour of CES 2009 is over. Crayon did an excellent job of marshaling the six bloggers together and giving us great access to both Panasonic and their products. On top of this, they were very open about letting us tell stories in our own ways and letting us explore CES in between our meetings with Panasonic. I have some thoughts on the entire experience.

Crayon Did Well

The package that Crayon put together for Panasonic included six really different bloggers with six different perspectives. It was a chance to play with Panasonic gear, to talk with Panasonic officials, and to spend time with the rest of the event as contrast. For instance, I went over to Sony to see what they were doing, to contrast it with what I learned at the Panasonic booth. (I’m sure there’s a bit of difference between me having access to Panasonic and not having access to Sony, but I tried to stay objective.)

Joseph Jaffe and Greg Verdino from Crayon did a great job managing the experience, and keeping everyone educated on both sides. Panasonic CMO Bob Greenberg deserves lots of credit for giving this a shot. I’m going to ask him to come speak at New Marketing Summit in 2009 to tell us more about what he was doing and why.

The Gear

We got three different pieces of equipment. The dSLR camera was the Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1. Of the three, I loved this the most. I felt it took great pictures, had lots of features (the one I liked and used the most was it’s IA feature, “Intelligent Automatic.” It also was a neat jump-step between a point and shoot camera and a full scale dSLR. After using the Nikon D60 for a great duration, I feel this camera makes an interesting “in between” play for people who want more than a point and shoot, but don’t necessarily want to go pro-am. I really really really like this camera. I’m looking forward to using it more, and I’m investing in more glass for it at some point. (The camera types call their lenses glass, I’m told. What do I know?)

They gave me also the Panasonic SDR-SW20S Waterproof Camcorder. This is a “family” camcorder. The coolest part is probably that you can use it underwater, like swimming pool underwater.

It’s meant for a family. It’s compact, easy to use, really indestructible, and hey, you can swim around with it.

As a videoblogger, this might not be the rig for you. The pull out display screen doesn’t turn around far enough for a videoblogger to use it. The buttons aren’t exactly intuitive. I kept wanting to push the screen when prompted, instead of using the pad to the side. I think it’s a good rig, but not an amazing rig.

The last piece might be really good for you. Why? Because I’m going to give this one to you, someone in my community. It was the most expensive rig of the three they gave us. It’s the most advanced. It’s a powerful camcorder. Check out the Panasonic HDC-SD100 . I can’t review it because I never took it out of the box. Instead, check out this review by Steve Garfield.

Watch This Space

I’m going to figure out how to give the HDC-SD100 camcorder away to you. Let me get back to you on it. This is something where Panasonic went out of their way to promote their Living In HD platform, which supports their beliefs that technology should benefit a human’s interests. It was a great project, where Crayon did a great job running a blogger relations campaign. I feel really good about the project.

So, let me figure how to get you into a giveaway where I can send you the HD camcorder? Fair?

Thanks again to Panasonic and to Crayon for this opportunity.