If you’re serious photographer, you need a big camera with a whopping lens, right? That’s the assumption many people make, so they buy a DSLR. Less bulky ‘mirrorless’ cameras aren’t even on their radar.

Our job was to disrupt this purchase journey, drawing attention to Panasonic’s Lumix range.

How? By listening.

Looking into the top Google search queries revealed something very interesting: growing speculation about the future of DSLRs. The most popular search terms about DSLRs were overwhelmingly negative. Further probing revealed a great deal more debate, mostly on niche camera forums, buried far from the typical purchase journey.

And so our strategy was born. For anyone thinking about buying a DSLR, we’d surface the genuine, overwhelming speculation about their future.

We built whydslr.co.uk - a forum organised entirely around commonly asked search queries, curating the latest expert opinion from around the web. Then, through a comprehensive listening activity, we’re quick to point anyone considering a DSLR towards our forum. We also bought top slots on Google Adwords, pointing anyone searching ‘DSLR’ towards the latest evidence about their possible demise thanks to new mirror-less technology.

This is just early days for a site that’ll last as long as the big cameras do. But after a couple of weeks we’d already had over 2,600 inbound links to whydslr.co.uk pushing the site up organic ‘DSLR’ search results. And after one month we’d had over 20,000 unique visitors to the site, without any paid media beyond Adwords.

We built whydslr.co.uk, a forum organised entirely around commonly asked search queries, curating the latest articles from experts around the web along with a series of video tests to answer them.

whydslr.co.uk disrupts the purchase journey in two ways:

When people are asking on forums or social channels about the merits of DSLRs, we’re quick to point them towards our forum before they buy their new camera.

And we bought the top slot on Google Adwords, pointing anyone searching ‘DSLR’ towards the latest evidence about their possible demise due to new mirrorless technology.

After just a couple of weeks, we’ve already had over 2,600 inbound links to whydslr.co.uk helping the site appear near the top of organic DSLR search queries – and we’ve had thousands of unique visitors to the site, without any paid media beyond adwords.

This is just early days for a platform designed to last as long as DSLRs do. But already, we like to think Why DSLR? proves two things. You don’t need a huge camera to take nice pictures. And you don’t need a big, traditional media spend to create a hard-hitting social campaign.