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Best catalogue?
18 replies
The US was started in 1970 and Video products did not become part of the US range until the MX5000 was launched in 1988. The catalog you all are talking about was created in the US not in Denmark but an advertising firm in Minneapolis led by Mr. Donald Phillips. He created the image for B&O in the early years in the US until the the Danes decided that all marketing material must come from Denmark. This is now why the current catalogs are so generic and boring.
He did a wonderful job. As has been pointed out, it borrows from the European catalogue of the time but also adds some wonderful details. The exploded Beocord 5000 gives one some idea why B&O technicians would blanch when one of these came in! Informative and interesting - how about a special run on the present range? Maybe we could design a similar catalogue for this year's range as a Beoworld exercise?
My B&O Icons:
The photos were all done in Denmark by Mr. Ib Sorensen in his Struer studio. Hence the tie to the european catalogs. Don wanted more details to show the quality and the engineering that went into the products. Its amazing more of this is not done today. B&O still fights the image of just a pretty face with nothing special underneath. We know it's not true but perception becomes reality unless you show it.
I was quite instrumental in working on the 2006/7 catalogue, where I set the goal of trying to reintroduce substance into the tale.
That was hard going - but the interviews with Dave Moulton, John Mathieson, Hélène Grimaud, Bart de Wever, heads of audio and video, and others survived the grind of resistance, more or less. In spite of this, the reaction afterwards was that "next year we're going back to more pictures and less text."
What happened next year was the magalogue, where my only involvement was the interview with Frede Kristensen from Classic Audio (and that interview was de-Jensened in editing, I'm afraid.) B&O has fantastic, incredible stories to tell - and should tell them. 😁
A brand such as B&O has to keep telling stories of substance, in order for the market to grasp and understand this substance. The catalogue Peter drew our attention to with this thread does that wonderfully. I hate the interior decoration aspect of B&O - it's not furniture, dammit! 😕
I would enjoy reading the 1979 catalogue much more, too. But I am sure if my wife were given the 1979 catalogue and the 2008 "magalogue" she would definitely prefer the latter because she would definitely be more interested in seeing other people's interiors than learning about the design of the MMC cartridge. Maybe B&O have decided to make their cataloques more "girl-friendly" 😕
I started keeping each catalogue in the late 90's...
my favourite catalogue is the 2001 catalogue and the 2005-2006 with the Beosound 9000 6 silver cd's on the back
i really like the 2001 catalogue it has alot of interesting pictures and i really like the image with the girl who has wings like an angel looking down at the beosound 3000. And the Beosound 1 metal grilles floating in the air. And the image where a mas is sleeping with two beuatiful beolab 4000's on each side his face like two pillows. A really innovative catalogue. The new catalogues are kind of boring but i still like them.
Would have to say the "bright yellow" catalogue US of the 1980's, just gorgeous photos from the 6500 system down the line....9500 ..4500, Beolab 5000/3000 panel speakers, penta's and RL series, MX/VX 5000/5500, turntables RX and TX, Attica furniture, MCL lighting. This catalogue seem to have it all. But again the gloss photos just brought out the products from off the pages into the mind. Would liked to have had customer stories included but oh well! Can anyone tell what exact year this catalogue was published??? There was also a purple AV- MX/VX catalogue that accompanied the general "bright yellow" one. This one was done also in the same photographic luster.
Best regards,
Dave
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