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Sony Shrugs Off Bad Press - Still A Strong Brand
netbuzz writes "The Sony brand name took a beating last year over all those burning batteries and the rootkit fallout, right? Wrong, at least according to a recent survey of 2,000 adults who are apparently willing to forgive just about anything ... if you give them the right reason. Other technology companies, most anyway, also fare well in the brand survey. From the article: 'According to the survey, the Sony brand finished a gaudy ninth among the "Top 20 Winners for 2006," sandwiched comfortably between a couple of saintly American icons: Oprah and the National Football League. Moreover, the respondents see Sony climbing to No. 4 among this year's gainers, right above Amazon and eBay. Moral: Build a better PlayStation and the American consumer will forgive all else.'"
I bet Sony still wishes their Vaio line had a Ferrari-logoed laptop right about now...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Battery fires and rootkits are Slashdot tech news, but not everyday Mom & Pop frontpage news. It's then quite obvious why Sony still has a great reputation with the majority.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
It's the 10% who see through the BS that are worth listening to.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
People just have too short an attention span today. I remember when a company does evil and at least try not to deal with them anymore.
I won't bore you with my Sony stories, you have probably heard them before.
Take $200 off the PS3 and all is forgiven
is dead to me
There is no such thing as bad press. If your brand is in the news and keep people talking about your brand, it's more likely to be remembered.
Sad but true..
I bet it is painfully uncomfortable being sandwiched between Oprah and the National Football League.
I was originally planning to sit on the fence regarding the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray format war until a dual format player was released.
And then I heard Sony was using their licensing agreements to prevent such a device.
Sony just refuses to do what is best for the consumer, be it root kits, memory card interoperability, or licensing rules like this.
I can certainly say that *my* image of them has tarnished over time, and I am now seriously thinking about buying HD-DVD just to spite them.
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm ?story_id=8173422
..."
"... reduced headcount by 10,000 ahead of schedule. It is also on track with factory closures, asset disposals and winnowing its product line-up
It's good to read that things are going so well.
They didn't even have to do that, apparently!
*Ducks.*
Normal. People. Don't. Know. What. A. Root. Kit. Is. Nor. Do. They. Want. To. Nor. Would. They. Understand. If. You. Told. Them.
Normal people are not interested in knowing how things work. They only care how they can use them to get more of what they want. They'll use a laptop to crack coconuts, if that's what they need. As for spiffy-looking stuff, Sony can still deliver.
Especially if you're looking to light your rootkit-infested laptop on fire spectacularly.
In action in this story.
It takes a whole lot to piss off a customer. DRM and broken batteries certainly isn't close enough. This is why Marketeers get all hot and sweaty about being the first brand that people think of. You can abuse your customers and they keep coming back for more. Lesser brand consumers generally won't tollerate the abuse and switch to sony and still get abused, but since it's "sony" they take it.
This one reason why Apple's switching campaign while noble and a general good for all who switch from Windows is so slow. It's why consumers of all kinds who switch to Linux won't switch because windows has some problems. They'll switch because of an application they can't get on windows. Given the way Microsoft is tightening the DRM and market segmenting nooses, most consumers will simply tollerate the abuse.
Lesson #1: Be #1 in the hearts and minds
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
will i buy a sony
for an hdtv, computer or zomg pink pony!
their service is shit
and their quality teh suck
in a 4 letter fit
i now use sony in lieu of fuck!
Americans are very forgiving in the long term. In the short term we're ready to fight at the drop of the hat (or swerve of the SUV, as the case may be).
I will not longer buy Sony products! Their screw the public attitude with the root kit and playing "games" with everything else just makes them the scum of the earth. There are other options.
Clever or not, I got nothing...
I can certainly say that *my* image of them has tarnished over time, and I am now seriously thinking about buying HD-DVD just to spite them.
I believe the term you were looking for is "Cut off your nose to spite your face".
I can understand someone being angry at Sony and thus not wanting to buy products from them.
But walking into an obvious dead end like HD-DVD when Sony is clearly popular and will prevail with Blu-Ray (along with Disney and Apple and Dell and Fox and other other members of the Blu-Ray forum), well that's just silly. How is that going to hurt Sony in the slightest? You'd be much better off simply not giving your money to Sony than to throw it into a competitor. At least think about giving the money to an organization like the FSF, who does more real work to counter proprietary things companies like Sony do than any competitor who simply does the same things as Sony but with a different format.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When you go into a mall and see a Sony shop that scream prestige and high class where no other electronic manufacturer even HAS a shop.
When you go into an electronics store and notice that Sony televisions are placed in their own private sections aways from the others.
When you go into a video game store and notice that the PlayStation brands are located at the front of the store and the rest are in small corners or at the back, behind the PS3 advertisements that are hanging on the ceiling.
When you go into a large retailer and notice that PlayStation games take twice the amount of shelf space for the same amount of games available than it's competitors.
Those are the signs that say that Sony "dictates" to some retailers how to put them in a positive way and how they "manipulate" their own image.
Here's Mr. Jow average's reasoning:
The product in front of my eyes in the diamond incrusted mahogany display that cost 1000$ has GOT to be better than the one in the back of the store, on the lower metallic cheap shelf with dust all over it that is priced at 500$. I don't need to do research, it's fairly obvious...
People just have too short an attention span today. I remember when a company does evil and at least try not to deal with them anymore.
I'm right there with you - in regards to Sony Music.
Sony games on the other hand is a totally separate division, who has brought us a PS3 with Linux support. Just as you remember when a company does evil I try to remember when a company does good - and realize that really large companies are made of divisions that are almost totally independent in deed and leadership.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've said for years and years now, Sony is pretty good at "walking the thin line" of how much the average consumer will tolerate and still keep buying their products.
... but back then, you didn't really see SD media around. You had mostly CompactFlash, which was noticeably bigger/bulkier, and those "Smartmedia" cards which always seemed flimsy, like they'd accidently snap in half in your pocket.
The "techies" have been complaining about them and their proprietary, incompatible product releases since at least the era of the Sony "minidisc" format. But the public doesn't really care. If a Sony product turns out to be a "dud", it sort of fades away into non-existence, and their more successful products are still all over the store shelves, regularly recommended by magazine reviewers, store salespeople, and satisfied consumers.
"Techies" had nothing good to say about Sony's proprietary "memory stick" technology either. Yet I bought one of their camcorders (a TRV-730) which has proven to be an excellent buy as the years have passed, and it uses a memory stick for the still photo feature in it. Truthfully, when it was new, I preferred the physical format of the memory stick to the alternatives. The "SD" format is pretty darn similar in thickness, weight, and overall size
They're also a major motion picture studio, releasing quite a few films the public wants to watch and purchase, and some of the slimmer, ultraportable Sony Vaio laptops are among the "best in class". Of course, the PS2 wasn't exactly a marketing failure either - and I maintain that the PS3 has plenty of time to enjoy a good success too, if the right game titles start coming out for it and the price comes down a bit. (And why wouldn't it? PS2 prices had several significant drops over the years.)
"Moral: Build a better PlayStation and the American consumer will forgive all else.'"
A more powerful playstation, yes. Better? Eh....that remains to be seen.
Living With a Nerd
Why go to another brand when you can pay a $300 markup for an exploding Sony laptop? That's what I say!
Otherwise may be to the 158,500 employees or to Vanguard with 11 million shares Sony isn't so dead.
Yahoo! Finance
My city: Barcelona.
> Moral: Build a better PlayStation and the American consumer will forgive all else.'"
Pretty sure that Americans who hold the NFL and Oprah in high esteem don't give a lick about where their next PlayStation is coming from...
...for all the crappy audio gear they have been putting out for the past decade. Love it when stuff dies a week out of warranty. Better yet, it still works but since it's a build date of Oct 03, not Nov 03 it won't work with accessories.
I've suggested several times in the past that it appears that democracy (as well as commercial democracy, voting with your dollars) breaks down around 10e6 to 10e8 scales. Once a governed population reaches this size, it can no longer assume that reasoned debate will be able to sway casual opinion at all. Once a customer marketplace reaches that size, no boycotts are effective and bad products don't change anything in the general perception, since so few people actually inform themselves. A politician or a company would have to be caught red-handed burying razorblades in the babyfood before the mass public will even notice and associate badness with the politician or company in question.
Blind fealty to parties and brands just compound this situation. A politician who is caught shredding the constitution is forgiven merely because they are in the favored party, as if that were salient. A technologically dangerous product is forgiven merely because the company spends a ton of cash on those "lifestyle" branding ads that don't even talk about their product anymore, completely contrary to logic.
[
... in their commercials can't be all bad ;)
this article in a more accurate way. There are customers on this planet so stupid, nieve, willing to part with their cash and hooked on consumerism, they would gladly take a porkin' up their dirt road....... and be happy about it....... all because company (insert any you like) compensated with a better game, game console or whatever. Yeah that sounds about right.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
The long view is traditional (ignore the Welsh CEO they have) in Japanese business culture. If you think they get bad press in the English speaking world, wait until you read what the Taiwanese, Chinese, and other Asian (read ASEAN) press skewer them with.
And for good reasons:
* They've been hurt badly in every market they have; viz the iPod, Wii, XBox, and consumer electronics entertainment markets
* They've shown little respect for media consumers, viz the installable rootkit, and the HDDVD wars
* They've shown little innovation-- a former hallmark
* Their PCs break, they have rotten warranties, and they're not designed for real-world mobility; worse, they're anti-FOSS and have no formal Linux support mechanisms worth mentioning
The ultimate problem: their value proposition used to be high-- and priced high, but no longer leads the markets they're in-- they're followers now. They've had their lunch eaten by lots of astute competitors.
Dare I say it? Ok: they've jumped the shark.... sadly.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Considering that they're targeting most of their products at early adopters and high end users, this survey is rather unrepresentative. Their regular electronics departments haven't been making them money for years.
look at how badley bush has done, and people still voted in his faviour.
The only smart people were the people who didn't vote.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Seriously though... out of 2000 "off the street" Americans, how many do you honestly think even know what a "Rootkit" is - or whether or not they may even be infected with one!? This stuff might matter here on Slashdot, but seriously? The American Public? Of course Sony is going to have high rankings among the public - nobody 'forgave and forgot' about rootkits, the public never even paid attention to them.
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2007/1/ 5/6489
The Sony name has just as much cache now as it has ever had among the general public which likes their DVD players and televisions, doesn't have a clue about what DRM is or means (until their kid starts screaming that their favorite Disney DVD will not play anymore because it is heavily scratched. Then, when the parent buys another one and looks to make a VHS copy that the kid can destroy, they find out about the wonderful world of Macrovision) and absolutely ZERO knowledge of what a "rootkit" is and why that is a bad thing for their spyware and spambot infested windows desktop.
Perhaps this will make no difference to Sony in the marketplace, but I think it is fair to say that among geeks, who buy lots of technology products and have money to spend, the Sony name has taken a hit. I will not purchase a Play Station 3 for precisely that reason at any price. There are plenty of other worthwhile games and platforms to spend my time and money on instead. Sony may work for Joe Sixpack, but it doesn't work for me anymore (I was never a big fan of Sony before the rootkit and battery debacles anyway) and I suspect that there are many others here on Slashdot that feel the same way.
This survey was done by a company called "Landor Strategic Brand Consulting." Obviously, these guys are not in the business of taking impartial surveys, they are in the business of PR and building brand recognition and loyalty. Now somehow they have everyone talking about how the bad press just doesn't matter. No one is asking, "does it matter?" anymore, they are asking, "Why doesn't it matter?"
Very clever PR. I'd take these results with a Great Salt Lake sized grain of salt. Don't let these sleazy PR hacks brainwash you into doing their work for them.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I can simplify this subject.
,we thought, we bought. It's virtual ownership in the real world. It's bullshit, but people don't care enough to stop consuming it. They are ambivalent and addicted. When will people stop being sheep and put an end to this bullshit?
90% of American consumers, know nothing or could care less, about DRM, proprietary hardware, etc. so, as long as they like a product, they will buy it. If the product is over-priced, for their specific incomes, they will not buy it.
The PS3 is a good value based on the hardware, involved, but most people don't care about that because they are not technically savvy. Most do not care if the PS3 includes a BR drive, either. People but consoles to play games. The public, at large, do not buy consoles to install Linux, to play around with homebrew, mess with clusters, etc. The crowd that does those things are in the minority, unfortunately. The PS3 is simply priced too high, for the average consumer and, is overkill, in terms of their needs. Force-feeding BR, which jacked up the price, big-time, was a mistake. Microsoft chose to modularize the 360, in terms of HD-DVD, and that was an excellent idea. They gave the consumer the choice and that kept the price down. I can afford the PS3, but I can't justify $600 for it. The only reason I'd buy it is for the BR, but I am in the minority on that one. I bought a 360 and the HD-DVD drive. I am very happy with both products and the entire service, as a whole.
I am not a fanboi of either company/system, but I have to admit, Sony has made some major mistakes this time around. The proof is out there.
Back to the American audience. I am American, if it matters. I will speak of Americans, here, as they since I am not a sheep:)
The majority of Americans are sheep, know very little and/or don't care enough to learn about the things, that matter around them. From politics, to technology, to rights as citizens, to government, and everything else, in between. They will take anything they like, regardless of it causes cancer, makes them fat, infected with DRM, etc. if it satiates their "must consume" at all cost mindset. You have to know that DRM keeps getting worse and worse because the majority of American, and the world at large, do not care enough to speak with their wallets, in terms of not buying such fucked up products. Corporations are slowly, but surely, ruling the world, making the laws, and are no longer selling us products, instead, only issuing us temporary licenses to use the products
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
Geeks try to rationalise everything in terms of measurable physical factors (e.g. reliablity, stability, performance per dollar). But, we tend to forget what everyone else cares more about the human factor...
Put that this way, Vaio is an overpriced laptop (so as designer clothing, Rolex and Ferrari). But, it makes the owner looks cool. It is more important than anything else. As long as the product kind of works and the price tag remains high, Sony can get away with it... According to my biased sampling from people around me, the attitude towards Sony is one of the fairly reliable test for (non)-geekiness.
The Sony brand name took a beating last year over all those burning batteries and the rootkit fallout, right? Wrong
Who didn't predict this?
Oh, I know who... that 80 or so users who planned to boycott sony from slashdot.
Yeah... right.
you morons need to wake up; slashdot does not represent the public at large.
furthermore I'm just so happy to see all you little whiners screaming that the public is dumb because they don't listen to you. I don't listen to the babblings of the best buy salespeople either.
I love to see you morons crying out and predicting Sony's fall only to find that you didn't make any difference.
now apply this same lesson to linsux. maybe you fanbois will finally catch on.
Despite the bad press and some very questionable marketing and business choices (Rootkit, batteries, betamax, et. al.) they remain a very reliable brand for most products. I have a DVD+R drive I purchased back when they first came out from Sony and it's still going strong. Likewise, I have a DVD player, subwoofer, and PS2 from them. Only the PS2 started to glitch after 5 years, and I cleaned that up by adjusting the laser level and cleaning off the lens.
My 34" XBR TV got top notch reviews from Consumer Reports and unlike most companies, it has a 24 month warranty. Although I didn't go with the extended warranty, a 5 year coverage is $99 and covers shipping. That's far from the anal rape most stores charge.
Of course, that's my experience. You get a few sour ones like a replaced battery or a DOA PS2 and you might have a different opinion. What I can't deny is that they need to hire a marketing department worthy of the name. And declare that Sony BMI is dead to them.
I double yellow dog dare you to point to a source.....
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I think the Linux support is pretty irrelevant but one thing I have noticed is that consumers in this country (the US that is) will not stand for the short product lifetimes of the more expensive Sony products. Sony has pretty much the smallest window of support for all of their systems and they typically do not release drivers for operating systems which come out during their window of support, let alone after it. I had an older Vaio with a neomagic graphics chipset for which the manufacturer had actually made a win2k driver, but sony never released anything past a win98 driver for it and neomagic only supplied drivers to the OEM for that hardware (at the time, possibly still, I got rid of it long ago as it was old and slow so today it is a non-issue.)
In general Sony equipment is devoid of quality these days. It looks nice but you can get something better and cheaper that will last longer! But nothing they make personifies that statement like a Vaio laptop.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My PCG-C1X Vaio mini-laptop uses 2.2 Linux. Not for much, mind you-- with a 4GB hard drive, but it's useful once in a while.
We totally agree.... the battery warranty expired in 90 days-- for a battery that cost 4x what a 108a/12v car battery costs.
Then, one of our notebooks had an exploding Sony battery in it. It melted, but the effect was noxious. Egads. I once waited eagerly for each of their new items. Now, they're easy to skirt on the aisles of the big-box retailers. Foo.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The correct moral is that bloggers are a vocal minority and not trend-setting taste makers as previously thought.
I understand in certain areas of research 2,000 is sufficient, but personally I'd like to see alot more surveyed. Like 5-10K.
No, not only the US consumers. It's a global phenomenon. People will always fall for shiny and price, even if the company behind it would make the shell of the item out of little kittens and have it assembled by 8 year olds who get whippings instead of lunch breaks.
The average consumer is dumb. He will buy everything, not even bothering to check what the company he is buying from is actually doing to him. Vendor lock-in doesn't exist to him, at best he'll ponder whether that means he has to get outta the mall before they close.
The attention span of a goldfish is actually longer than theirs. Now that I ponder it, it seems the average consumer is also the average voter.
Heck. The average person is just utterly stupid.
Sorry for the rant, it's just what I feel when I read stuff like that.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Sony TVs and Receivers are still excellent. Their LCD projection TVs and sub $500 recievers are the best in the market.
No, I will not work for your startup
With regard to hardware: at one time Sony hardware was generally high-quality. But about 20 years ago they started broadening their market by selling lesser-quality hardware. You could no longer expect the name to reflect quality. Many other tech companies have faded in the same way... it happens (GE and RCA among them).
The manipulation of subjectively perceived quality by manufacturers is inversely proportional to knowledge, particularly technical knowledge, of the consumer. A favorite example is bad audio gear which has enjoyed a reputation far higher than observation allows. Prime examples: a certain speaker manufacturer, and a certain absurdly high-priced-cable manufacturer.
People can be fooled by what sound like legitimate technical specs which are, in fact, techno-babble. Virtually meaningless wattage "standards" for amplifiers, for example, can turn a 50-watt RMS amplifier into one that puts out several hundred watts. A geek knows there's no such thing as "music power".
If you don't know enough to avoid getting burned, talk to a geek that does. And find a way to reward him/her for the studying that went into that expertise.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
Let's face it, there are companies that make it on their technical excellence, and there are those that make it on their marketing. The sad thing is, it takes a fair amount of money to get by on just your marketing, so most companies that do were initially those that had some technical excellence. I think that's why geeks hate companies like Sony and Bose so much: it's like they sold out, milking their formerly-deserved reputation while cranking out products that are markedly inferior to their competition (except from the "ooh, shiny!" and thumping bass standpoints). Especially when they start protecting their reputation with heavy-handed legal maneuverings.
Just junk food for thought...
I am sorry but the American consumer is among the dumbest and most astonishingly ignorant in the entire world. I don't think its about forgiveness Its about ignorance. Plain and simple. When we the people realize that Sony is at the forefront of purchasing away YOUR RIGHTS from congress. When we the people realize that Sony is among the most arrogant and draconian companies in the world and regards all their customers as criminals. When we the people realize that Sony will stop at nothing to dominate and dictate how we use hardware and media. When we are sure about these things and many others we will stop purchasing their crap. The thing here is that just about every piece of electronic equipment I currently own is Sony. I am personally responsible for sales of well over a million dollars worth of Sony products by proxy. But given their practices I will never again purchase another Sony product as long as I breathe oxygen on this planet nor will I EVER recommend their products to any of our clients or ANYONE for that matter.
Landor polled 2,000 consumers. Knowing what you know about consumers and their knowledge of tech, how many of them do you think were even aware of rootkit issues and bad batteries (unless they were personally affected)?
The article is right, the Playstation cures much bad press.
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
For movies, CD's with rootkits and exploding laptop batteries. Sony being highly rated is surprising but give Sony time because they obviously haven't had enough time to screw everyone, yet.
Thanks to eating disorders most chicks are reasonably good looking these days.
too bad sony's going to be the industry whipping boy for 2007 as well . the reason ? the playstation 3 . while people are selling their first born to get a nintendo wii, and preliminary NPD reports on the xbox 360 suggest a healthy retail season, sony is stuggling . they struggled at the manufacturing level, they put forth a dismal group of launch releases, the blu-ray/hd dvd format war isn't even in full swing yet, and this has all led to piles of playstation 3s ending up on the floors of major retailers . the free market has their piece to add . nintendo wiis, released around the same time as the playstation, have sold more consoles, and interestingly enough, are still selling in bundle form and selling for around 100% markup over retail on ebay, long after the launch . the playstation 3, on the other hand, is struggling to find its way off of store shelves and web pages alike . sony has burdened another piece of hardware with a proprietary format that the world has not yet embraced . they are like a child that continues to hit themselves in the head without learning .
The long view is traditional (ignore the Welsh CEO they have) in Japanese business culture. If you think they get bad press in the English speaking world, wait until you read what the Taiwanese, Chinese, and other Asian (read ASEAN) press skewer them with.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I have for a while wondered if part of the problem was that the Japanese don't run Sony anymore and basically Americans (or their European white bread counterparts) do. American businesses have a "Drive up the stock price today! Screw tomorrow!" mentality that I think leads to a lot of these decisions, such as the root kit.
I used to buy a lot of Sony stuff for me and my family members. The name used to mean something. Now I think of Samsung the way I used to think of Sony. Everything I've bought from Samsung has worked exactly as promised and worked well. I have a good opinion of LG too. In fact, I'm starting to think that if it comes from South Korea, it's probably good. I won't touch anything by Sony any more. Too many bad mistakes. Too much cluelessness. Too much "Do it our way and screw everyone else".
After all, people are gushing over XBox 360 and a bunch of XBL functionality when it comes form the same company that has been abusive before. As long as the XBox 360 produces "derblinkenlites", many will be distracted from many of their practices that are dubious. That isn't to say Microsoft never does anything good or worthwhile but it falls into line with what is going on here with Sony. Doing some things right doesn't seem like a good excuse for any company to get away with things.
So just like Microsoft, if Sony gets to a point where their games produce enough distracting "derblinkenlites" that is entertaining people will forget a bunch of stuff Sony has done wrong. No one seems to remember how horrible Microsoft misteped in the XBox 360 release nor will I be surprised if Sony follow the same route they'll end up in the same place.
Don't be an unpaid flak for a PR company. This "survey" was bought and paid for by Sony, and it says exactly what they want it to say. And now you are helping them. Look at the company that did the survey, Landor Strategic Brand Consulting. They don't even bother trying to call themselves an independant research firm. They are a PR firm specializing in perception management. Now you are parroting back exactly what they want you to say. They want everyone to believe that no one thinks any less of Sony. And you are helping them. This is as much about managing perception in the tech industry as anything else. Do you want to have your perceptions managed by these guys
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I'ts not this one dimensional and the way down is non linear.
You can fsck up many times and still have a excellent name before people will remember ALL YOUR FAULTS AT ONCE.
It's like the greenhouse effect.
Sony, along with a number other companies, technology and non-technology, are on the blacklist here. Sony, obviously for the rootkit and other anti-social behavior. Other companies make the family's list because of various forms of anti-social, anti-consumer, monopolistic practices and the like. Companies on the family's blacklist get zero patronage from my household, for any product or service of any form.
I'm pretty good at conveying the message to my customers, friends and family too. Including customers I've influenced, I'd venture that there are several hundred Sony products that haven't been sold amounting to $250,000 that went to other companies. Not bad for an individual.
I also have a very long memory. Sears Roebuck cheated my father in the '70s over interest on a "big ticket" item he bought there. Something about Rule of 78 Interest Calculation. My father never patronized Sears again, nor have I ever, nor have any of my siblings. Similarly, we are all pretty good at convincing others to do the same. Sears, already in some decline at the time has further withered. I'd like to hope I contributed to that decline.
So, to businesses out there that think they can screw the consumer, "F*ck You". I'll see you out of business in my lifetime. That means you too, Microsoft.
This is definitely a PR ploy. There using a great influencer, making headlines saying "Look no one cares", so then it gets PR around people going "wow no one cares... maybe I shouldn't either." Sneaky, but smart.
Most people aren't thought about after they're gone. "I wonder where Rob got the plutonium" is better than most get.
I would otherwise agree, except that I worked for another Japanese company in consumer electronics that would be shocked and horrified at what Sony has done. The mentality is to brave out the bad words and carry-on, stiff-lipped. Business is war, and war must be won. Their different-drummer status led them to great victories. Now, as you cite, the Koreans (and others) have learned what it takes to advance innovation-- although Korean vendors such as Hyundai and Samsung have outrageous business practices, and scandal is the rule of the day in Seoul. Trillions of won (the currency) have been paid in fines..... but may be the tip of the iceberg. Whereas the press and even the blogosphere can have heavy influence in NA and EU, it's often brushed aside in ASEAN countries. There's a stick-together mentality that just doesn't exist off US101.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The actions that Sony took with Blu-Ray and the PS3 have knocked them out of the console dominance market, which has resulted in them losing the format wars to HD-DVD (which will become apparent around mid-year, but is obvious in market data I read in the Wall Street Journal (expensive subscription required, I read the print version).
Unless something magical happens, at this point they've lost the synergistic marketing push needed to succeed, and need to revisit their strategies sooner rather than later, based on reality and not current wishing.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
...we hate Sony for the same reason we hate MS...because we do. We need to quit all this whining and face facts, for all their shortcomings Sony and MS put out some damn good products. If not they wouldn't be Sony and Microsoft
Pffft.
See this: http://intellinuxgraphics.com/ ???
Call me when there is a http://sonylinuxgraphics.com/ and they have decent PS3 graphics driver code in the X.org source tree.
Hell, call me when there is at least a binary (nvidia style) Linux graphics driver.
Oprah? I'd hit that.
Yeah, but people need to get real. All of these things are simply excuses. The rootkit? Contractor for Sony/BMG... not high-level insidious conspiracy, and nothing to do with SCE. Bad batteries? Warned, recalled, and hardly something intentional.
Look at Microsoft. They have a long-term history of abuse, of which most slashdotters should be aware. This is stuff from the highest levels from the earliest days, designed to slit the throats of competitors and overwhelm the market. IBM? DR? Stac? Lotus? Netscape? The list goes on, both big names and small. Hell, SCO is still going on. We're talking about a company whose only real competition in the last decade has been a Free(tm) operating system, and they're still gunning for what is essential the community. These things aren't incidental, they're continuous and Microsoft has shown no penchant for change. Yet, they release the XBOX, and the XBOX 360, and everyone is gushy and loves them all of the sudden. Does anyone even remember what they did to Bungie and Halo?
In reality, if the PS3 were $299 or $399, rootkits and batteries would be swept under the carpet, and people wouldn't care. But increase the numbers a little, despite being the same cost (or less) than your competitor with an equivalent featureset, and people are at your throat.
Idiots.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Was amusing actually, one of the Mac people here giving us crap about how Dell are bad because of the battery thing, he shut up when apple did a recall as well... :D
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I don't care about the battery issue because I wasn't affected.
I don't care about the rootkit because I discovered a long time that it's simply better to download music (stolen or not) than to rip it from CD. Why? 1 CD wouldn't play on my computer because of some kind of copy protection. They only screwed me once...
I don't care about the PS3 debacle because I was never going to buy one anyway.
But I am fucking pissed at Sony because I bought the 40 episode DVD set of Starship Troopers: Roughneck Chronicles. Only to find out that Sony made the 36 first episodes of the series and never bothered to make the LAST 4 EPISODES. Instead, they mixed together parts of old episodes to make 4 stand-alone new ones to make it to the advertised 40. Thus, a series with no ending.
The outsourcing pundits had the last laugh in this one. It really isn't about the programming or the QA. It's about the brand and the marketing. People don't want to read about the programming language, debugger, or operating system. They want to read about the brand, the CEO, the marketing.
Toshiba and Samsung are eating their lunch (not to mention many smaller brands). Sony products are too expensive compared to their competitors, and often have some hidden limitations (for example, they are unable to play PAL color format content on sets sold in NTSC countries, whereas other vendors have no problems with this). Unless you're really buying just for the brand, it's impossible to recommend spending the difference in cost for a Sony product when alternatives are available with much better quality/price ratios.
Hey cool, they give mod points to astroturfers now! That's SURE to up the quality of dialogue here on /. Hey PR flaks, take Bill Hicks' advice and go kill yourself.
If I'm gonna get marked flamebait, you ARE gonna see some flames...
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
or was it just me...
... to believe that Sony bought this survey and the conclusion that its negative press in '06 hasn't hurt its brand takes quite a leap of logic. The press release issued by Landor doesn't even *mention* Sony or how it did in the survey, never mind make any attempt to pass off the company's positive survey results as evidence of anything. No, to believe this was part of a PR plot, you'd have to believe that Sony/Landor bet the entire scheme on its confidence that a writer (in this case me) would request the supplemental survey findings (which again make no special mention of Sony), notice Sony's appearance on the '06 and '07 "winners" lists, draw the conclusion himself that it proves the Sony brand to be bascially immune to the battery/rootkit disasters, post that opinion to his blog, have Slashdot pick it up, and, presto, instant corporate whitewash. Now that *would* be clever PR.
Of course, it is always possible that I, too, am part of the conspiracy, but if that's the case my check must have gotten lost in the mail.
Well, you are the submitter, also the editor of networkworld where the article was published. So it's possible you have a financial motive. And what you describe is EXACTLY the way in which modern PR campaigns are orchestrated, correct? In any case, as you are well informed on the issue, I have a question which may help put my suspicions to rest.
Landor doesn't do surveys unless someone is paying them. They aren't a research firm. They are a PR firm specializing in perception management. So, who paid for this survey and what was the point of the initial press release?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Look, I dislike astroturf as much as the next guy, but PR companies spend a good portion of their budgets on honest-to-god research -
If money spent on PR firms counts as research then I can finally see how it can be that Microsoft spends billions on it each year and yet has so little to show for it - other than the billions in the bank, of course.
Even though Sony isn't part of a keiretsu, they operate somewhat like a keiretsu of their own. So to boycott all of Sony because one or maybe two branches do something you don't like is the same thing as boycotting Hitachi, Ricoh, Yamaha, and Nissan because Canon (hypothetically) put spyware in a printer driver. (All companies are part of the Fuyo keiretsu)
I do indeed have a financial motive: As long as I keep writing and enough people keep reading, well, I keep getting a paycheck from Network World (I can't even tell you if Sony advertises or not; don't know). As for what I described being the norm in PR these days? Nope. There isn't a PR person alive who would have tried to sell Sony on that particular sequence of events, which isn't to say that marketers don't use indirect tactics, they do ... just not *that* indirect. I can't tell you who paid for the survey (it wasn't important to my point about Sony, seeing as how I don't share the PR stunt suspicion), but my *guess* would be that Landor paid for it. Release said this was the fourth year running they've done this particular survey. I'd guess they do it to generate publicity for their firm and build their own brand as being experts about brands. (And just to show I can be as suspicious as the next fellow, my question to Landor -- if they were the subject -- would be what happens if a Landor client shows up on the "losers" list?)
It's ain't about root kits no more...
Sony was a leader, until everybody passed them up.
Canon makes better cameras,
Panasonic has some really nice equipment,
Samsung makes better TVs
Sony was a leader when it had the lead,
this annoyed all the other companies, spurring their own innovations,
now Sony has fallen behind as a consumer product line,
more in line with Magnavox.
Sony, you know, that popular brand from the 1900's?
I don't see 'kids' buying sony stuff - they buy other peoples stuff, whatever the reason, it is the truth.
When I think of Sony - I think of it as what my parents would have bought.
Now they buy HP and Canon - sorry sony.
Clearly popular?
Instead of just reading my post, you might just want to take a look again at the primary story I was commenting on, which in fact said that Sony was in the top twenty! It's not like I made it up, I was pulling that idea from the containing story.
Now Sony is obviously not popular with you or a number of other of people on Slashdot, generally mistrustful of large companies anyway. But as the study showed Slashdot is not representative of the population as a whole and most "normal" people still like Sony just fine, as do those of use with a more nuanced view as to what parts of Sony we dislike for technical reasons.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Okay, you are probably right, this is more than likely paid for by Landor and used to lure in new clients. I also looked around networkworld.com and there doesn't appear to be much advertising at all, let alone Sony advertising. Still, it's always good to maintain a healthy skepticism these days, what with the viral marketing and astroturfing, don't you agree? Or should we never look behind the curtain and never question motives?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Hey, a healthy skepticism is essential in all walks of life. ... Now I have to use some of that Sony payola to go feed my kids. Nice chatting.
Average Joe is asked "Do you want an HD-DVD, or a Blu-Ray?". What is Average Joe gonna say? He knows intuitively what an HD-DVD is, from his experience with regular DVDs and HDTV. It's a DVD, only better! What the fuck is a Blu-Ray? Is that some kind of fish? Average Joe will say "HD-DVD sounds like what I want. I don't have a fishtank."
And then Average Joe goes to the store, buys an HD-DVD, and takes it home - to play on his DVD [player hooked to his HD-TV. He has HD and DVD right? That should work.
So then Average Joe gets a visit to the return counter with a non-working disc. And gets told "you need a special player for that".
Given that Average Joe is probably at Best Buy, he wanders over to the HD display - and grabs one of the many Blu-Ray players, because he doesn't notice the one HD-DVD player off in the corner, and the Blu-Ray players are the ones hooked up to giant TV's.
You see, sometime name recognition is not actually helpful if the product you are making is not always backwards compatible. It's like trying to sell "HD-Gasoline" that requires a new engine to actually use.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
First of all, no format is gauranteed success. But if an HD physical media format is to win, it will be Blu-Ray because of a few reasons I already hinted at:
1) Exclusive studio support that offers the most desirable HD discs - Disney with Pixar stuff, and Fox with Star Wars. Compelling stuff for geeks.
2) People that actually make computers that people buy all being on-board with Blu-Ray - that's Sony and Dell
3) The physical number of players in peoples homes, with the PS3 every sale is another installed Blu-Ray player. It doesn't even matter if those people use it for Blu-Ray playback or not, because they represent a market potential for sales for every disc publisher. Just with the PS3 launch alone there are now almost an order of magnitude more Blu-Ray players in people's homes than HD-DVD units.
HD-DVD really has Universal and Microsoft as the primary backers - and Microsoft didn't even have the balls to include the player in the 360, the only consumer device they actually make that could achieve some inroads! We all know how successful console add-ons are in the long run.
The Blu-Ray consortium has way more companies behind it, and more meaningful companies at that in terms of building and selling successful consumer devices.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
DON'T make anymore atrocities like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx1H7-HhngE
If Babelfish had a marketing-speak selection, that would translate as "We sell shovels to people with skeletons in their closet."
So then who would you recommend?
oogly boogly!
I bought a Sony Wega TV not because it was positioned better in the store, but because it was the only flat screen I could find that a) wasn't a $1500 dollar plasma/lcd and b) didn't have a big thick black line at the bottom of the screen because quality control was too lazy to aim the electron gun right.
Could I have spent dozens of hours of my time researching and found cheaper tv that met these requirements? Sure. It wasn't worth the $100 bucks.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Why on Earth do you list a URL that points to a website with zero content?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Well, My P990i just died on me. It has memory problems, Software is buggy, Crashes, leaks memory (despite garbage collection).
Eventually one starts to wonder of Sony is a still a 'premium' brand. It will take some time but it will come.
Martin
I was once the proud owner of several Sony products. The pain my daughter went through with the rootkit (on a CD she received as a birthday present), convinced me the only real solution was to boycott ALL sony products. This includes movies (Columbia pictures), media (blank CD and music CDs, and blue-ray DVD products), hardware (no PS3), and software. In a free market, once a participants loses its brand integrity, there's really no point in dealing with them anymore.
Yeah?
Well, you Canucks need to join the 21st Century and jump on this separatist, crusading "Anti-Terrorism" bandwagon. Tow that line before you're suspected of harboring (more) "terrorists!"
While it is true that Sony batteries exploded, the manufacturers should have tested thoroughly before selling their product to the end user. Sony did not have to apologise to the customers unless they bought batteries directly from them. What these laptop manufacturers do with their component supplier is totally up to themselves, and they should be responsible for any defects, otherwise the users would have to chase up individually.
That shit spewing out of your mouth must taste disgusting. Sure, the iPod hurt them, but as of now the PS2 is still the top selling game console which sells the most new titles. This holiday season the PSP had excellent sales and the PS3 isn't impossibly difficult to manufacture, as everyone speculated (the whole, "if the 360 is in this short supply imagine what the PS3 will be like" mentality turned out to be bogus. No one cares about rootkit, including me, and if you then I hope you never go into business, where you'll find out that sharks are the only fish left in the sea. Every company you think doesn't have dirty secrets is just better at hiding their secrets, which is scarier than a bumbling, unorganized company which gets caught every time.
.dare I say, Microsoft level. Articles about Microsoft aren't written anymore because they became so common in the 90's that people stopped reading them. We all know that they'll sleeze their way out of any predicament and pretend like they're not that bad because so many of us are required to use their products by our employers or we're too lazy (Linux) or cheap (Apple) to take a risk with a competing product. Sony gets bad press because Sony being a bad company is NEWS. Microsoft being a much worse company is OLD NEWS, so it doesn't get published anymore. People who say they're sick of Sony's bullshit and use Microsoft products are completely ignorant and hypocritical.
How are you going to act like the record company that Sony bought stealing and selling your information is a big deal when record companies are in the business of stealing from artists and selling their shit. It's not like Sony could have bought a non-shisty record company. Those types of labels are far too small to add to Sony's bottom line. And the exploding batteries? Pfft. Even Apple, who makes my favorite hardware, has sold me some stinkers (iBook).
Considering all the fucked up things corporations do, Sony is no where near the Enron, or . .