Here's an example of a fairly integrated marketing approach by SONY that cleverly links product design to advertising message. The new SONY E Series Walkman is a small and light memory stick MP3 player with a built-in USB terminal that plugs right into your PC for quick and easy file sharing. It provides three hours of music playback after just three minutes of battery charging.
Amazing!
SONY captures this sense of surprise in product design that echoes an exclamation point.
The copy reads:
Charge for 3 minutes. Play for 3 hours.
Introducing the new SONY Walkman
SONY Like no other
This is a fine example of how a proposition is strengthened when product and communications design thinking are combined. Most companies develop products in isolation, then hand them off to the marketing department and ad agency. "Here you go. Find some way to sell this." Sometimes that works, but your chances of coming up with something that really grabs consumer attention are exponentially improved if you involve the marketing and ad guys from the start. If you're an advertising exec, you should be pushing your clients to involve you in a collaborative way. SONY has done a great job designing the product and coming up with a strong ad visual, but what about the name? This new Walkman is know as the E Series. Given the chance, a sharp copywriter could have easily come up with a product name that works off the exclamation point angle.
The lesson? The more you integrate function, naming, design and communications, the more punch your proposition delivers.
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