Supporting Product Knowledge Training at Panasonic
Over the last couple of weeks, I've been helping Panasonic, one of the world's leading consumer electronics brands and a company whose products I've been reviewing for several years, by supporting retail staff training initiatives through the delivery of the first of a series of "HD Camcorder Academies".
With sales staff at the company's expanding number of retail stores - recently rebranded "Panasonic Store" - around the UK it's imperative that the people working at the sales coalface are armed with all the right facts about the camcorders they're selling. Having achieved success with a recent "Camera Academy", the company decided to adapt the concept for its first equivalent HD camcorder workshop. And that's where I came in.
The three-day event was held between Monday 12th October to Wednesday 14th Octber inclusive at Donington Park raceway in the UK's East Midlands. Now, F1 Racing fans will know that this is the planned venue for the British F1 Grand Prix from 2010 onwards (although that's still up in the air), and Panasonic thought it would make an ideal location for the training event that would mix training sessions with product "hands-on" sessions orientated around a number of motoring experiences.
My contribution was to present two one-hour sessions to the delegates - The Camcorder: A Brief History and Why Choose Panasonic?
With my being completely independent of the company, Panasonic training and marketing staff thought that it would be a good idea to have someone who could look at the brand and the product offer from a detached position; not only did it make it more objective but it also added a degree of credibility to the sessions. In other words, it wasn't just another internal sales pitch of the kind we all-too-often see at company sales and training events.
In the first session, entitled The Camcorder : A Brief History, I took delegates on a whistle-stop tour of the technology of video recording from its roots in 1952 with the introduction of the BBC's VERA videotape recorder to Ampex's revolutionary VR-1000 4 years later and right through early portable video camera systems, early VCRs and on to camcorders from Betamax and VHS to present-day AVCHD high definition models.
The second session, entitled Why Choose Panasonic?, wasn't a selling job as you might expect; instead, what I did is to share my thoughts and processes when considering a new camcorder fore review. What features do I look for? What do I consider to be essential and what's desirable? What helps to define a good camcorder and what's not? They seemed to enjoy it all.
If the Panasonic people themselves are anything to go by, it was a hugely successful three days, and my own contributions seemed to play a positive role in helping the retail staff - who came from stores all over the UK - to gain a better understanding of not only the history of the humble camcorder but also of the huge technological advances that have been achieved in such a relatively short space of time.
I took along several examples of ye olde worlde video tape recording formats - such as Philips 1500, 3/4" U-Matic, Betacam and even 1" C-format broadcast videotape - which attracted a lot of interest. Just think, we're going to face a generation of people who very soon won't know what VHS is!
I look forward to doing more as it was great fun, even if my voice was a bit hoarse after talking non-stop for two hours!
Colin
Images ©2009 Panasonic UK. Used by kind permission
My contribution was to present two one-hour sessions to the delegates - The Camcorder: A Brief History and Why Choose Panasonic?
With my being completely independent of the company, Panasonic training and marketing staff thought that it would be a good idea to have someone who could look at the brand and the product offer from a detached position; not only did it make it more objective but it also added a degree of credibility to the sessions. In other words, it wasn't just another internal sales pitch of the kind we all-too-often see at company sales and training events.
In the first session, entitled The Camcorder : A Brief History, I took delegates on a whistle-stop tour of the technology of video recording from its roots in 1952 with the introduction of the BBC's VERA videotape recorder to Ampex's revolutionary VR-1000 4 years later and right through early portable video camera systems, early VCRs and on to camcorders from Betamax and VHS to present-day AVCHD high definition models.
The second session, entitled Why Choose Panasonic?, wasn't a selling job as you might expect; instead, what I did is to share my thoughts and processes when considering a new camcorder fore review. What features do I look for? What do I consider to be essential and what's desirable? What helps to define a good camcorder and what's not? They seemed to enjoy it all.
If the Panasonic people themselves are anything to go by, it was a hugely successful three days, and my own contributions seemed to play a positive role in helping the retail staff - who came from stores all over the UK - to gain a better understanding of not only the history of the humble camcorder but also of the huge technological advances that have been achieved in such a relatively short space of time.
I took along several examples of ye olde worlde video tape recording formats - such as Philips 1500, 3/4" U-Matic, Betacam and even 1" C-format broadcast videotape - which attracted a lot of interest. Just think, we're going to face a generation of people who very soon won't know what VHS is!
I look forward to doing more as it was great fun, even if my voice was a bit hoarse after talking non-stop for two hours!
Colin
Images ©2009 Panasonic UK. Used by kind permission