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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.'"
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.
Take $200 off the PS3 and all is forgiven
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.*
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
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...
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.)
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.
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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.
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
Why would you assume that Blu-Ray would prevail over HD-DVD, or if either of them will be successful at all?
There are several possible outcomes which should be considered:
There are dozens of other possible outcomes that I haven't even listed
Blu-Ray is not ensured success and a lot of its greatest strengths (like greater exclusive studio support) were gained under the assumption that the PS3 was going to be 'super successful'. Remember that most of the studios would have exclusively backed Blu-Ray when the PS3 was supposed to launch in Spring 2006, when that went away studios continued to support Blu-Ray because Sony was going to sell 2 Million PS3 systems at launch, an additional 2 Million units by the end of 2006 and have a total of 6 Million systems sold by March 1st 2007.
Hypothetically speaking, in March Sony may only have sold 3 Million PS3 systems worldwide and Microsoft could announce the Core XBox 360 being discontinued, the Bundle being priced at $300 and a HD-DVD compatible XBox 360 for $400.
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
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.