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Perhaps, but it was a matter of personal integrity.

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I tend to agree whole heartedly. Seems like they were catering to the sophomoric Animal House crowd....and I'm as straight as an arrow too! Mike

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FOOD FIGHT!!! Lol

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I myself find celebrity endorsements annoying and ridiculous. Most but not all have little or no connection with the product itself. It just raises the cost. If the product is that good it will sell itself. Mike

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I agree with you that a good product will sell itself, However to whom does it sell? A select few? as a buisness owner for the past 20 some years I know that marketing can keep a buisness afloat or sink you.
At the time of these ads. the space race was losing intrest with the public and I think they were trying to keep a larger client base. If they hadn't gone the direction the went would Celestron still be around?
Just my point of view not trying to be argumentive Mike

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Personally, I was sufficiently put off by the ads at the time that I changed my plans to purchase a C11, and instead obtained a Meade 2120... I know of others who responded in similar fashion.

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Not many. Not many male astronomers, anyway.

Seriously, the ads were a part of their time, where sex was used to sell everything from toothpaste to auto parts to, well, telescopes. Celestron wisely moved on, which the feminist in me applauds and the caveman in me regrets.

You shoulda got the C11.

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Perhaps, but it was a matter of personal integrity.

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Give me a break.

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Break given... take all you want!

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I suppose you'd have been similarly put off had the campaign featured young men instead?

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Possibly, if they'd appeared to have stepped out of GQ, and had most likely never encountered a telescope before in their lives.

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The ads were tastefully done and, in no way, crossed the line of decorum - except perhaps for the overly sensitive.

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It's not a matter of decorum or taste, but of objective. Amateur astronomy in that era was almost universally a male pursuit. The overt implication seems fairly obvious to me... then again, perhaps I'm overly sensitive.

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(snip)So I ask those that have a problem with pretty girls hawking products, did you feel the same way about the Celestron advertisement featuring Leonard Nimoy standing with a Celestron C-8, stating that when he wants to see the "real universe", he uses a Celestron.(snip)

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(snip)
Think of the products use use everyday that are nonetheless advertised ,often by use of attractive women and celebrities.Are you willing to forego use of those products from some sense of indignation?

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I realize that I'm probably the exception, but yes, I try to avoid when possible those products whose advertisements rely upon either celebrity endorsements (the cost of which is added into the product's price, however minute) or pretty faces/bodies... and that's not a reflection on anyone who chooses to do otherwise, it's just how I roll.

Honest, straightforward advertising that forgoes the above is what I like to see, and I make every effort to patronize those businesses whose appeal is to reason along with, or better yet instead of, one's limbic system.

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If I buy water in a bottle it has something mixed in it!!

I would never have dreamed people would be spending Billion$ on little bottles of plain water.

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If I buy water in a bottle it has something mixed in it!!

I would never have dreamed people would be spending Billion$ on little bottles of plain water.

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So you prefer advertising that panders to rationality. Alas, a very small market that.

But I see nothing wrong with Celestron trying to grow the market and increase the size of the amateur astronomy community with the message that astronomy is fun. The orange tubes and the young women depicted using telescopes convey a markedly different view of the hobby. It's not boring old science, it's FUN.

By the way, there's a difference between a model who seems to be using a telescope and one who is merely in the same frame, or presenting the telescope to the audience. It's sometimes difficult for those of us with a Y chromosome to think that an ad showing a female model using a telescope isn't entirely for our benefit. I have no proof, but I suspect that at least part of the rationale was that it might encourage women to consider amateur astronomy.

Geoff

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the old fashioned stuffy Meade ads of the elder male in a white lab coat

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That was Brian Holdcroft. Brian was an employee, not a model.

-Tim

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