SI: Sony Insider Interviews Rick Clancy, Part 2

[Christopher]

Late last year we had the opportunity to talk to Rick Clancy, Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications of Sony, and ask him several questions you guys submitted to us via our “What Do You Want To Ask Sony?” post. The dialog lasted a while, and you can catch up on the interview by reading Part 1 of Sony Insider’s interview with Rick Clancy.

Rick Clancy: Certainly alot of effort has gone into development of the Playstation Network. Initially, of course, as a service with the Playstation 3 console and experience. Certainly the vision is for that to extend like a tee if you will across other devices in the Sony family.

Sony Insider [Christopher]: Wow that’s great, really fantastic news. I’ve got a Playstation 3, and when I use the store, and I’ve used others, and honestly it’s one of the best interfaces I’ve used for purchasing movies. It has clear lists of thumbnails for movies; you can search, and everything looks crisp and sharp. The previews, whilst not in HD, are still high quality; a very quick interface, and very smooth. It definitely feels, at least as a consumer as I use it, that this could be something much greater and obviously more unified. That’s really fantastic to know that Sony is moving in that direction. I believe that the consumer already identifying the disconnect where there is obviously multiple stores under the Sony wing. ..that are catering to their own areas, but are dying to be unified.

Rick Clancy: Taking a step back again to the broader question, using our competitive advantages, I believe you are seeing Sony being much more nimble in respect to looking for opportunities to leverage one part of the Sony family along with another part. This was certainly something that came into play with the company’s global efforts in the Blu-ray disc format battle. Eventually, it came to an end 11 or so months ago around CES of last year and you saw the company pull together across operations in Electronics, Playstation, movies - globally behind this. I’m sure it had a lot to do with the success we had with getting to the point we’re at now.

Now the challenge (and we’re still working together with others in the Sony family) is making Blu-ray successful force in the marketplace. We see it in other promotional avenues - if you go to a SonyStyle store, you’ll not only see a lot of electronics products, but you’ll see an awful lot of the entertainment assets that Sony can bring to the table, whether it be movies, music videos, or movie trailers. We explored merchandising other aspects of the Sony family - including the latest James Bond Movie. We were very active with placing Sony products in these movies. Other than that, the movie becomes something of a merchandising campaign that involves Sony Style stores and retail. Even products designed with James Bond series - like a Vaio, camera, etc.

Sony Insider [stan]: I always look forward to prodcut placement in Sony movies.

Rick Clancy: Yeah -

Sony Insider [stan]: I can always recognize the products.

Rick Clancy: At CES you’ll notice a strong representation across the Sony family. Of course, it is a consumer electronics show and electronics will be prominent and there will be some exciting innovations and announcements in that regard. You can bet it will be a very different kind of keynote than you’ll get with Samsung, Panasonic, or even Apple for that matter.

Sony Insider [stan]: Talking about announcements, is Sony looking for a having speak from a younger generation, or someone who has really loved and adored working for Sony speak for them? Whenever we see presentations (online via Sony, Youtube, etc), you always see someone who works for Sony, but whenever they present something, like a new product, they’re not excited about it. You see the person go through the specifications, and the product can do this and that, but we don’t see the sparkle that would bring more hype and joy into consumers..

Rick Clancy: Are you talking about presentations that you’ve seen from Japan, or in the US, or..?

Sony Insider [stan]: Pretty much everywhere. I’ve seen a few in Europe that were on the better side such as IFA. Pretty much across the Sony platform, but you see boring presentations..

Rick Clancy: Some people aren’t as comfortable as giving presentations, and they’re trained as engineers, and not as performers.. During CES 2008 at a press conference during the eve of the show, we announced a variety of initiatives and new products, but we saved what we thought was the best for last. We surprised the audience by asking Sir Howard to come up and join us during the press conference; Howard unveiled the OLED TV, which kind of popped up on pedestals out from below the stage and came out with smoke, lights, music, and stuff like that (laughs)..

Certainly we’re making that effort, and it makes sense, and you’ll see that at CES 2009. That’s a good point though, we can always do more to bring more attention to new products and innovations, but put them in a perspective that sort of shows the enthusiasm and excitement and amazement around these products.

Sony Insider [Christopher]: It’s interesting Stan said hype - the hype machine. Sony is obviously aware of the hype machine, and that exists on the Internet, and that’s through product leaks, FCC notices, inside sources, etc. It seems like instead of in the past, Sony would be a little turned off or get the lawyers ready for people who leak product information - it seems like now that Sony doesn’t hound people down on the Internet. In my time of ATRACLife and even on Sony Insider, we would bring product leaks, especially with many Walkmans, for several years. We would bring that information first, and Sony would release it later. It seems like Sony is really cognizant of these blogs and supports them.

Rick Clancy: Certainly social networking has become more important to us. We were shooting this new global television commercial, for the next generation of Bravia televisions. One of the big features is the 240hz Motionflow technology which is aimed at particular keeping images real and sharp that are fast moving like in sports, action scenes, etc. We worked with an ad agency in Europe and created a Bravia-drome - a moving picture thing that spins around and around. Sony had some journalists, but mostly bloggers and social media types to see this thing. That was very much by design, and there was a certain amount of buzz out there. It is a visual and pictorial experience. We are thinking more and more that way.

You mentioned the FCC; they put out these reports all the time as new products or technologies are destined for the market in this country from overseas. That’s part of the reality of what we have to deal with, so we’re doing the best to do just that.

Sony Insider [Christopher]: It’s good to see that Sony isn’t making people take this information down, and not saying don’t read this, and being quiet and letting the people develop their own interest, which I believe is brilliant.

Rick Clancy: We’re experimenting. We’re trying new things. The interesting thing is that there are now more opportunities, and it’s the basic necessity to communicate and share information directly with the consumers for the public without the filters. Without the press putting their own perspective on things - while you can always create an advertisement put on or television commercial, you don’t know if anyone is watching or listening. To get engaged somehow, whether its social media or directly.

We did this promotion for the Sony Reader, you might have seen it on my blog. We had this guy in a window, on 5th avenue in New York, reading. It was an effort to get people to see what this thing is all about, and try to touch it, and try it out for themselves. We find with certain products, if people have an experience with it, they will be much more inclined to get enthusiastic about it and ultimately purchase it.

Sony Insider [Christopher]: The next question we received is similar to the last one, in a certain sense, in a unity sense. “Sony has a lot of strong brands, like PlayStation, Walkman, Bravia, etc. Do they think they make enough use of the fact that they are all related, that they are all Sony? Do they think the general public related them to Sony?”

Rick Clancy: Well, on the last question first - I think the general public does relate them by and large to Sony - that relationship to Sony makes those sub brands so strong. To the first question, I would say that this person has hit on something; it’s the strength of Sony that’s most critical. The strength of Sony resonates with consumers around the world, certainly in the US, where Sony has consistently been ranked for many years number one (or at least within the top 3) best brands in America, which is really phenomenal considering the company is based outside of America. I am very much in the camp that these sub brands are fine, and they have value, but the principal value is in the master brand of Sony itself.

Sony Insider [Christopher]: This leads into the next question - which was a hot topic not that long ago during the summer of 2008. The world was obviously hemorrhaging with the financial markets, and even Jim Cramer, a very popular stock analyst and financial analyst that some people agree and disagree with called for this. Very unusual, that usually doesn’t happen often through the worlds of prominent media figures - What about rumors about splitting up Sony into parts?

Rick Clancy: A few years ago, a part of Howard Stringer’s and Dr. Ryoji Chubachi’s initiatives after they became the CEO and President of the company globally, they took some initiatives to discontinue or sell off certain businesses that were not deemed to be strategic in terms of Sony’s global strength and propelling it to greater heights. You saw that with some businesses that are not obvious to people in the US - like restaurants, a trading company, and there are a couple of others. With that said, there are other areas that are very important to Sony aside from electronics which are fundamental and core - so too is entertainment - music, movies, video gaming.

I remember the first CES Howard Stringer was at when he said something along the lines like - and I’m paraphrasing - “New technology and electronics hardware is rubbish” were his words, “..without compelling and exciting entertainment content.”

The company sees merit in maintaining and building and having even more interaction between the different parts that make Sony such a global entertainment powerhouse. When you step back and look at it as I do from the electronics business perspective, it’s one of the things that make Sony stand out relative to our competition; Samsung, Panasonic, Apple, HP, Dell - Sony is unique, where it has this breadth of not only electronic products and technology, but these entertainment properties. It’s so cool that we can have planning sessions and product development meetings with colleagues at Sony Pictures, in the movie business, in the television business, in the home entertainment and package media business. We can talk to people involved with digital cinema - we can ask what is the future of movie-going going to be like? It’s just amazing.

The whole video game area, and what’s that done in terms of Blu-ray and HD, making it better than it is today, and down the road - 3D. There are a lot of things that I mention here, but they make Sony unique and stay unique. Differentiating from the competition is very difficult in these days of digitization when it’s very easy to replicate a certain product in the marketplace.

Back in the analog days, Sony would have at least a two year lead with some of our new products until the competition was anywhere close to what we had on the market. It’s more and more difficult to differentiate a digital camera, or digital music player, or a digital TV. What makes Sony special is our various businesses in the entertainment area. I don’t think the current management team, and the vast majority of business managers and employees would have it any other way.

Sony Insider [Christopher]: It would be very strange to live in a world where Sony doesn’t have its media.

Rick Clancy: The culture is 180 degrees from where it was in the early 90’s when Sony acquired Columbia pictures, and a couple years before that CBS records. I think when our people use electronics, music movies pictures and games, we all can find ways to take advantage of the strength of our sister companies in the Sony group to advance our business agendas, and give the consumer a better entertainment experience.

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