When the camera manufacturers came into our living rooms and presented their latest consumer cameras in the last century, Nikon, Canon, Pentax, Olympus, Minolta, Kodak, Polaroid, and others on our T.V. sets during the evening news with Walter Cronkite. They sold cameras and dreams, they even tried to convince the public with Fashion Models, (Cindy Crawford for Olympus), Paul Simon wrote and preformed the song, "Kodachrome" intentional or not, the song did help boost sales at Nikon, many Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen came home with a Nikon they bought at the P.X. on Okinawa, Japan while on R&R from Vietnam. If it wasn't a Nikon, it wasn't a camera!
When Canon introduced the AE-1 Program via a T.V. ad, the wife had to have one! An SLR that did the thinking for you, all you had to do to get good pictures was focus and shoot! She convinced me to buy one, so we made the trek to, "Letts Camera Shop" in Lemoyne, PA. where we bought the AE-1 with an f1.8 50mm lens, Vivitar flash, 70ish-200 zoom lens, some film, and a bag to carry it all in. I think the entire bill was under $400. including a free, get started lesson in the shop and some booklets.
Minolta probably had the most irritating ad which ended with, "Only from the mind of Minolta..." I don't think it did em much good as they always ranked far behind Nikon and Canon.
What do you think, has the camera industry been lax in getting the word out via T.V. lately? I'm just an old guy who doesn't think of a camera in a phone unless some slaps me up-side the head and reminds me, (and yeah, I got one, but rarely use it).