Sony Makes (dot) Believe It Knows What It Wants To Be When It Grows Up
Sony is the word's second largest major label group, but on the corporate level is Sony an electronics company? A music company? Film? Gaming? Sony, it seems, wants to be an entertainment company. But try as they might, they have failed to to have the kind of recent success stories as Apple and others.
The answer, Sony hopes, is better integration of its many brands and products. The ease of use and cross compatibility of iTunes, iPods, iPhones, Apps and a soon to be announced tablet along with elegant design have made Apple a modern success story. Why couldn't the larger, more established Sony follow that same path? In September, Sony announced it would unify its global brand messaging under the banner: make.believe. (The dot is spoken when saying the slogan.) So far, the new focus hasn't lead to any breakthrough products or rush to embrace the Sony brand. But that hasn't slowed Sony's efforts to convince us with a very expensive ads series of make.believe ads. (Watch the latest ad here). The messaging touches all the bases but is devoid of any specific new products or ideas. Perhaps that's because Sony doesn't have any…
Clearly this was cooked up in Japan. They used to have stuff like this on whiteboards all the time whenever I visited. And this kind of approach will work in the Japanese market, but probably not anywhere else.