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Nikon archive has stored a lot of printed brochures that were produced in the past, but unfortunately, all of them are not stored in the archive. The reason is that, as is customary with a brochure, the sales brochure is a necessary and indispensable item during sales, but it will become unnecessary once a product life comes to end and sales is ended. This time, of these sales printed matters, four items (for convenience sake, hereinafter called A, B, C and D) in early days of Nikon camera will be introduced here.
Fig.1
Fig.2
A sale of Nikon camera started with export, so a flyer was first produced in English. There was nothing printed on the flyer in those days implying production time and thus, an accurate production year is not available.
A picture used in a flyer A (Fig.1) was a trial product, so this flyer seems to have been the first one in Nikon cameras. As a magazine ad using the same picture was started in 1947, the flyer A must have been produced during roughly the same period. The flyer A was a quick and dirty flyer with monochrome printing on both sides of a piece of a A4-size paper and it looks like a trial piece of a brochure. A corporate mark arranged at the top was a NIKKO mark with a Chinese character that had been used before the second world war, but a sense of discomfort unconsciously wafted in the English flyer. From necessity of a corporate mark appropriate for exporting to overseas markets, a new corporate mark was designed of an English description of NIPPON KOGAKU/TOKYO using the same outer frame as it is. A flyer B (Fig.2) was the first to use this new mark and it was for the first Nikon range finder camera, NIKON I.
When comparing its content with one of the flyer A, a standard lens 50mm f/1.8 and telephoto lens 85mm f/2 were newly added to an interchangeable lens line and its line grew from 5 to 7 items, which made a big change. However, a body copy text in the flyer B says that " five lenses being available" This seems to have been wrong due to an error in proof reading. 50mm f/1.8 was a pre-production sample lens and its commercial model was not marketed for sale, so this flyer must have been produced with a careless error.
Fig.3
In a flyer C (Fig.3), the body copy text was corrected to " six lenses being available" but the number of the lens line was "7" was left stet as it was in the flyer B. The flyer C, in which two descriptions (red circle in Fig.3) in the contents of the flyer B were corrected with a rubber stamp, was just for a range finder camera, Nikon M with 34mm wide of a film size and 36-exposure frame number. This flyer must have been abruptly prepared in time for Nikon M scheduled to be available in October 1949. In the specifications on the flyer, there was nothing more than two corrections only, though, technical requirements to correspond to corrected specifications imposed lots of burdens on designing and manufacturing side. The flyer C is thought to have positioned as a provisional version.
A last word of a Nikon M flyer was a pamphlet D (Figs. 4 and 5), in which a graphic design work like a Nikon logo, page layout and coloring etc were created a little, and a catch copy was changed from "Precision Miniature Camera" to "THE FINEST 35mm CAMERA" and a two-fold pamphlet really looked a brochure. As 50mm f/3.5 and 50mm f/1.8 were gone, then the lens line made 5 items in total.
Fig.4
Fig.5
Nikon was compelled to change the picture format and the number of frame exposures ranked as a number one and two among features of the camera in the flyers A, B and C. A cause of a failure or these designing changes seem to have been that, when the specifications were decided, Nikon was short on marketing research in the U.S, the largest sales market in the world and originality was forcedly sought with no care about de facto standard, namely, Leica size (24 X 36mm). No other markets except for Japan struggling short supply of goods as a defeated country might not show any sympathy to a feature with an increase of 4-exposure frame in the number of exposures. Up to then, Nikon had had no experience in handling mass-produced goods targeted for general consumers and its main customer was Japanese government and its related agencies. Under such situations, Nikon camera was planned and marketed with insufficient marketing abilities.
In the brochure D, main features were changed to compactness, ease of use,......, but the most highly rated features in the marketplace were "1 Reliability, 2 Credibility......" appeared at a bottom of the brochure.
