Heaptalk, Jakarta — The pandemic’s impact, which has been ongoing for the past year, is very pronounced. The reason is also reinforced by Indonesia’s macroeconomic landscape, which shows a decline, which the Badan Pusat Statistik reports that the economic growth at the end of 2020 is minus 5.32 percent.
This decline was caused by many things, one of which was reduced spending by the public. The decline in the GDP value impacts economic turnover, namely the weakening of the community’s buying and selling power.
On the other hand, this is a natural thing if many business actors experience losses. But for some of them, this situation needs to be taken more seriously if they don’t want to fall to the decline valley’s bottom.
One of the initiatives in keeping the sales trend vivacious is how Canon, a photography camera brand and printer, maintains an engagement level with its end customers. Even though the company, which has been active in the Indonesian market for 13 years, has experienced dark periods, where its sales fell by almost 50% compared to the previous year, this engagement strategy hoped that this figure would recover for the better.
“We continue to maintain a positive trend. Therefore, we continuously maintain closeness to our customers through the four principles that we carry out. Namely, education, encouragement, enlightenment, and engagement,” said Angelie Ivone, Senior Marketing Manager of Canon Image Communication Products. Group PT Datascrip.
At the education level, Angelie explained that his party simultaneously builds mutual partnerships with various educational institutions, namely schools at the elementary, junior, and high school levels. In this cooperation area, Canon educates students about how to learn photography taught directly by the practitioners.
“The current era is ubiquitous. In the school environment, there must be something called extracurricular photography. So it is not uncommon for photography to be included in the curriculum, ” she added.
Meanwhile, on the encouragement side, Canon undertook an equally important initiative, motivating their loyal customers to continue to hone their photography skills. This strategy is also useful even for new customers. The management packaged this strategy in a photography competition event entitled “Canon Photo of the Month”, where the winners will grant attractive prizes. So this provokes awareness which is quite sufficient for photography lovers, both beginners, and professionals.
This strategy is also aligned with the engagement level that Canon is built to maintain good relations with the customer. The effectiveness can see how they treat customers by regularly providing campaigns in photography competitions, online gatherings, and talk shows about photography with experts to bring customers closer to the product.
As for this photo competition event, Angelie explained that the management carried out this activity to replace Canon‘s recurring event in the form of a national gathering of Indonesian photographers, which was not held in 2020 due to the pandemic. However, according to her, the participants can take photos without leaving the house, just from the surrounding environment. The theme is adjusted to self-isolation themes, such as ‘happy’, ‘simple’, and ‘lonely’.
Furthermore, on the enlightenment side, Canon and Datascrip carry out continuous activities to answer all customer curiosity regarding products.
“For example, many of our customers don’t know the difference between the EOS-R and EOS-M products. So, as much as possible, we can give the brightest possible enlightenment through all of our channels, whether it’s using reviewers, key opinion leaders, so that we provide space to meet the experts with the Canon product team, “explained Angelie.
Even for customers who want to start their plunge into the world of photography, Canon also recommends many of its products very well. “For customers who want to start entering the world of photography, we recommend point-and-shoot cameras or DSLRs. Those who focus on video making can use mirrorless products,” explained Angelie.
