Manny Ortiz, 'The biggest Sony shill on Youtube' decides to become 'honest'

"Hi, My name is Manny Ortiz, and I am the biggest Sony shill on Youtube" is the beginning of the latest video by photography Youtuber and now former Sony Ambassador Manny Ortiz. In a very frank video he explains why he's leaft the Sony Ambassador program, that uses popular photography Youtubers and other influencers to market their cameras and/or try to taint the reputation of other brands. Sony was pioneer in this regard. When they launched their A7 and A7R series of full frame mirrorless cameras in October 2013, they went aggressively into the (at that time) very nascent community of online influencers. In 2013 Youtube was far from being as big as it is today. The biggest channel on the platform at that time had something over 10 million subscribers. In 2019 there are over 400 channels with over 10 million subscribers. Instagram had 150 million active monthly users in 2013. In 2018 they surpassed a billion. The times have changed a lot, also in the photography gear influencer community.

It doesn't make sense to be brand exclusive

The move Manny made is not new. In 2013 a Nikon exclusive channel named That Nikon Guy rebranded itself as Matt Granger a month before the A7 and A7R cameras were launched. The rumors that were swirling around at that time made it clear that Canon and Nikon were about to get some competition in the high-end market for the first time in decades, so online photography gear influencers braced themselves for that, and wanted a piece of the pie (do note that very little change happened among real photographers who represent a brand, people like Joe McNally for example). These changes only applied to online gear reviewers, who were mainly hobbyists with expensive gear that take mediocre pictures at best, and are generally not pros. Sony was smarter than the older traditional photography brands, and heavily invested in these new marketing platforms. They also had very little choice (same applies to Fuji), since Canon and Nikon dominated the real world, having long lasting partnerships with real photographers in countries all over the world, as well as having more local offices than Sony Imaging, their own service centers and a strong retail channel. Sony had to direct their focus to the online world by necessity (from marketing to sales), and Canon and Nikon were not very focused there until recently. The approach definitely worked well for Sony, but this is about to change.

Nikon and Canon changed the game again in 2018

When Nikon and Canon finally entered the full frame mirrorless segment in late 2018, where Sony enjoyed nearly 100% market share for the previous 5 years, a new change was on the way. Many mirrorless brand exclusive shills realized that snubbing Nikon and Canon makes no sense anymore, the market has become wide open, and there were suddenly tons of new exciting bodies and lenses open for review, while Sony (and to some degree Fuji) slowed down a lot with releases of new products, partly because they reached a peak of innovation, partly because they previously had a lot of quality control issues. Also a big factor: In the past 5 years camera shipments contracted significantly every year, in DSLR more than in mirrorless, but still, the market for these niche brands with a low market share that charge a premium price (Sony, Fuji, Panasonic and Olympus) has become much smaller it used to be just a few years ago. Launching new products for the sake of launching would not help. In a declining market you need to be smart and strategic, and think long term. You need to wait for the market to consolidate, not throw away money like Sony used to do in 2014 and 2015 - the effect will be very short term and limited. Sony are indeed smarter now, focusing more on lenses than bodies, trying to complete their offerings in areas where they're still falling short to Nikon and Canon (lens selection, speedlights, reliability, durability, service etc).

Influencer Nathan Elson quit the Fuji ambassador program for different reasons.

2020 and beyond

I am very sure that we will see more and more videos like this one Manny made 2 months ago called Sony User tries the Nikon Z6!. It's just not sustainable for most Youtubers to be limited to Sony (or Fuji) anymore, because the market will further decline, and there will be less new releases. At the same time, with the massive growth of Youtube and its hungry algorithm, there's so much more competition for eyeballs and valuable time, that these influencers have to release content almost every day now, or their views will decline. In 2013 weekly videos were the norm, today content is pushed out much more frequently, and as I have written in one of my previous posts, influencers resort to using a slew of dirty tactics to increase their views, such as stirring controversy by attacking a legendary photographer, or creating disgusting click-baity thumbnails. Given the saturation levels of social media these days, we're about to see another shift in the 2020s - the current approach won't be sustainable much longer for the majority of influencers. I predict that a lot of photography gear reviewers of today will either disappear, and get a real job, or they will expand their channel to other products like computers, smartphones or something else. When there is an abundance of content, it gets watered down, repetitive, and people don't really watch and get influenced anymore because everybody influencer likes every brand (and usually links to Amazon for purchase). There's no real value anymore for the consumer, every review or opinion is an advertisement of some sort. Also, the differences between cameras these days are really small (stuff like software, sensors and the basic lens selection). These differences will shrink further, which means eventually a few brands will disappear as well, as the market will further contract, and the big brands will remain, because they have a loyal customer base. My advice is: Don't waste too much time with reviews, go out and shoot, create art, have fun doing photography. Gear is secondary most of the time.

What is your opinion on where this all goes? Discuss in the comments.