Canon cited the smartphone as the biggest competitor to dedicated photographic device purchase today. Our idea was to leverage people’s love of smartphones in conjunction with the DSLR, as this gave a distinct role to both devices, and allowed them to compliment each other.

The companion app was built on the premise that functionality had to be innovative, and was designed in a way that was made complicated functionality easy to understand. Innovation was achieved through use of voice recognition in both aperture and focus exercises. Functionality was made easy to understand through a simple layout and end user experience.

The application contains three specific sections, Learn, Explore, and Inspire which between them teaches the consumer about the basics of photography explained through video, exercises, tutorials and troubleshooting tips with a specific section designed to inspire the photographer on future use.

Over the first 4 weeks 70% all 1200d purchasers downloaded the application, highlighting the app’s appeal, and surpassing our campaign goal. The app’s content proved to be highly popular with average session length exceeding 7 minutes, with total cumulative time spent being 54 days. All application reviews, by both consumers in the app store, and the camera press was effusive in its praise. Canon believe the delivery of an always accessible education programme through mobile has been a real differentiator for their products within a competitive sector.