A week and a half ago, I had the privilege of being invited to the National Museum of Singapore for the launch of the brand new Sony Vaio P, Sony’s venture into the realm of ultra mobile computing. This blog post is more about the social media/communications standpoint of the event, rather than the actual product itself because I had to leave early and didn’t actually get to “play” with the product.
The Unveiling
First up, I have a video of Mr. Kazutoyo Araki (Senior Manager, Area Marketing Group, Global VAIO Direct Department Business Planning and Strategy Division, VAIO Business Group), telling us a little about the history of Sony’s innovation from the Walkman, and unveiling the actual product. Now I was expecting someone to walk on stage and flash it or a curtain to be swept aside to show the product, but how he did it was way better. Don’t blink or you’ll miss it:
The Message Tech 65 has their interpretation of the Vaio P from a pure technology point of view, but I look at the communication of the message. Whether it was Mr. Araki or Ms. Janice Yang from the VAIO Product Marketing Department of Sony Singapore, the key message was clear: It’s a premium, portable device, for the road warrior who needs regular access throughout the day (or on trips), but won’t necessarily use it for extended periods of time.
Word Of Mouth
One thing I think Sony did excellently (at least for the bloggers) was to provide us with a pamphlet the exact same length and width (but obviously not depth) as the Vaio P. While I was working on this blog post, I had that pamphlet with me and invariably, many of my friends asked to have a look and were oohing and ahhing over the size. Excellent way to reach the tertiary crowd.
Sony Vaio P
The pamphlet also allowed me to take a “real” representation of how small the Vaio P is with the picture to the right. Barely the length of three business cards. All this is proof that you don’t need expensive, crazy collaterals to make an impact, just the right one.
All in all, as an unabashed Sony fan, I have to say I think the Vaio P has chosen the right time to enter the market because everyone wants to be mobile without carrying around a 2kg laptop, and with their clear messaging to the public, they just might have a silent winner on their hands.
To close off this blog post, I leave you with the models strutting their stuff, as well as the Sony Vaio P at the product launch:
[Disclosure: A family member works at Hill & Knowlton, the PR firm behind this event, and as such, I have opted not to comment on their role in the event.]
Our criteria is simple: If we are likely to use a particular brand on an average day, we’ll include it in. So for example, even though I may only use my Flip Mino once or twice a week, I include it because the probability I use it on an average day is about even.
While originally, this was organised by timeline (i.e. at what time would you interact with which brand), I’ve decided to do it by category because I think it says more about my consumption patterns that way. Does it mean I use all of these brands everyday? No. But it’s fairly representative in that if I feel like a coffee, Tim Hortons is my destination.
Social Media/Web Apps
Social Media/Web Apps
So I’ll start, obviously, with social media and web apps. This is fairly straightforward, but the one thing I noticed when I started to list down the brands I’d include, was that Windows Media Player was an app I particularly wanted to list due to my immense dislike of iTunes.
Technology/Gadgets
Technology & Gadgets
Pretty straightforward here, so I’ll leave it as that.
Apparel
Apparel
This was just about the hardest category to do. For each of the brands listed up there, I have only one or two products from them: Zara (jacket, coat), Nike (sneakers), American Eagle (wallet), H&M (jacket, scarf), Guess (jeans), Levis (boxers, jeans).
This by no means indicates clothes aren’t important to me, just that I’d rather find some obscure shop and find a “slogan” tee, rather than head to the Gap or wherever to purchase one. However, the brands I do purchase for clothes (particularly Zara, Guess and Nike), I’m particularly loyal to.
Hygiene
Hygiene
Hygiene was fun to do because I have so many products. The ones I’m listing here are only those I’m using here with me in Canada, and I’m sure I have plenty more back home. I’m going to say hygiene is one area where I’m most susceptible to advertising.
Oral B from the whole “more dentists use” ads, Colgate was on all the time growing up, Axe from all the cool male advertising, Gillette is everywhere as well. I also want to say I actually have a strong dislike for Adidas as a brand, but only use their deodorant because it complements the cologne.
Interests
Interests
This was another really hard category because you don’t have brands for “books” or “music” or “Heroes” or “Lost”. So I included the brands of graphic novels I’m likely to read, as well as MTV (the TV channel I’m most likely to watch) and EA Sports which is the brand of the game (FIFA ‘09) that I’m playing now
Food
Food And Drink
This was not surprising at all. I generally don’t care about the food I eat, but I do like my drinks. The interesting thing here is that none of these brands would exist if I was blogging about this from Singapore. Tim Hortons would be Starbucks, Molson Canadian beer would be Corona, and Vitamin Water doesn’t exist. In other words, my brand preference is rather flexible and easily changed. Prior to coming here I hadn’t tried either Tim Hortons or Molson Canadian, but they’ve displaced my usual brands pretty quickly.
Finally, one miscellaneous brand:
Equality Logo
This is Equality, which is, from what I can tell, the house brand of Canada. Easily 20-40% of the stuff we buy here for the house, is from the Equality brand. Microwave food, toilet paper, eggs, canned food and much much more is all Equality.
I guess this is meaningful because when we first came here and went to the supermarket, we didn’t know what brands to get, but the mere pervasiveness of Equality made us gravitate towards it. Also, even though Equality easily accounts for a large portion of our weekly expenditure, I couldn’t find its’ logo online, and had to take a picture to get it. An overlooked brand, perhaps?
My takeaways from this exercise?
1) I experiment with a lot of brands. Nikon, HTC, Molson Canadian and Vitamin Water didn’t exist in my mind one year ago, but they do now.
2) I consider myself part of the “tribe” of some brands than others. Skullcandy, Nike, Flip, Sony, Axe, and MTV just to name a few.
3) Old habits die hard. I don’t think I’ve ever used another toothbrush except Oral B, or toothpaste except Colgate. Even if I did see products from other brands on the shelves, they don’t even register. It’s also very hard for me to use other social bookmarking tools like Twine because I’m so used to Delicious.
4) Word of mouth influences my purchase decisions a lot. Skullcandy, Sony, Nikon, Axe, Firefox, HTC, Flip, Versace and Tim Hortons are all word of mouth brands, that are now favourite brands.
How about you? What are the brands you feel passionately about? How do they fit into your daily/weekly/monthly behavior? If you were to do one of these by category or by timeline, how would it look?
ps: I’m sure I left out some brands of stuff that I use but just didn’t take note off, please excuse that.
