Like other high-definition LCD televisions on the market today, the Sony BRAVIA displays great picture quality, sound and advanced technology sought after by the recently exploding HD TV market. When lined up with all the other televisions, the BRAVIA doesn’t necessarily stand out. Each of its models differs in dimensions, screen quality, frame and capabilities, but Sony’s price premium sets it apart from its competitors. The Sony BRAVIA—Best Resolution Audio Visual Integrated Architecture—is among the priciest televisions on the market, and therefore, requires an advertising campaign that justifies its price premium and broadens its target audience. Fortunately for executives at Sony, Fallon
In behind the scenes videos, the head of Fallon London in collaboration with Passion Pictures revealed that the minds of the Sony BRAVIA advertising campaign followed their hearts to create something simple, iconic and emotional—a tactic aimed at replacing human desires with a connection to the Sony brand. Sony offers full commercials on their website (http://bravia.sony.eu/bravia.html), but they also offer, to a much greater extent, “making of” videos and behind the scenes reels. In addition to full commercials, upon visiting the website, consumers are prompted with links to “colour experiments,” producer and director’s commentary, mobile downloads, and director’s cuts; all of which reveal this ad campaign’s focus on the technology of color. The television commercials generate enough interest to get consumers to check out the BRAVIA website, but that’s where their utility stops. In essence, Sony BRAVIA’s ad campaign revolutionized product advertising. It embraces the idea of “ads as appealing as the programs” (Wallace, 57). It combined television with the power of the internet to create a viral campaign whose success rested on their creation of films or ads that people choose to watch.
The success of the campaign began with the airing of BRAVIA’s first commercial “Balls,” in which 250,000 colorful bouncy balls were catapulted into the streets of
The timing of the ad played an important role in the campaign, mainly, defining Sony’s initial target audience. Their colorful creative displays clearly targeted sports fans, but more significantly, the fans that were gathered around their television at home to witness the game with friends. Unlike the ads that have, “from the outset, projected itself at the lone viewer, Joe Briefcase, alone,” Sony’s ads play on the idea of community, bringing people together to witness something spectacular (Wallace, 54). In addition to the timing of the commercial, the execution and idea behind Fallon’s commercial entertainment was of utmost importance. In making this ad, the head of Fallon London revealed that they followed their hearts to create something simple, iconic and emotional—something artistic and unique that would replace human emotions with an association to the Sony brand (Bravia). The location of the shoot gave BRAVIA a west coast identity representative of technology, creativity and originality, and the execution of the film only furthered this campaign’s play on emotions. A look into consumer research showed advertising executives at Sony that color was the most motivating principle when shopping for televisions, and also provided a go-to explanation of Sony’s strengths. Therefore, in order to allow the commercial to portray the vividness of the balls’ colors and movements, it was filmed on location without the use of any computer graphics (Bhaskaran). For Sony, this was probably the most crucial element to their campaign. Despite BRAVIA’s advanced technology, the simplicity and seeming lack of technology in creating the commercial allowed the quality of BRAVIA pictures captured by Sony cameras to shine. More importantly, the lack of computer graphics made the commercial’s shooting unlike any other: the shoot became a spectacle for people to witness. The public aspect of this ad brings about an involvement with consumers, giving further emphasis to the campaign’s emotional qualities of the sense of sight and feeling of community. In a market focused on selling TV’s to entertain the masses, the Sony BRAVIA chose to focus on the people; creating a memorable event captured beautifully through this commercial, but also recorded by the hundreds of spectators who caught this spectacle on camera.
Importantly, this “Balls” commercial was aired only in the UK, never reaching American television; yet, within hours, amateur footage was being circulated all over the internet (Bhaskaran). From this point on, Fallon directors and Sony executives realized the direction that their campaign should turn. In a way, this first commercial taught them the importance of the internet and the power of word-of-mouth advertising, making this campaign viral like no other.
Like BRAVIA’s first commercial, the following commercials entitled “Paint,” “Play Doh,” and “Pyramid” achieved this same fame. All set in recognizable locations, each film created a public spectacle that encouraged pedestrian participation, commentary and amateur videos. The first commercial’s surprising online success taught the advertisers the need to harness the power of the internet. With such public displays, Sony allows the witnesses to take care of much of the advertising for them: through word of mouth. The handycam amateur editions are prime examples of the consumer generated ads discussed in Louise Story’s “The High Price of Creating Free Ads.” The versions of the commercial shoot flooding the internet are examples of an approach that combines the populist appeal of reality television with old-fashioned sweepstakes gimmick (Story). This type of campaign shows that everyone wants to be a part of the action, to get on television, to achieve fame through a spin-off, or just to voice an opinion on a blog website. From the success of their first ad, Sony’s campaign has come to exemplify viral advertising. After the creation of their second commercial, “Paint,” also only televised in
Sony recognized the fact that in the future, people may no longer have to watch commercials on television due to technology like Tivo and DVR that “with their dreaded fast-forward and zap functions, threaten the very viability of commercials” (Wallace, 57). So advertisers, too, must exploit the advancements of technology to their benefit. The campaign came up with commercials with profound impact that playfully resonates with the human condition, and provides enough motivation for viewers to choose to watch the ads on a website. Such a website is exactly what Sony created:
The website provided consumers with full-length videos of the commercials, as well as making-of videos, witness interviews, director’s cuts, interactive games, downloads, backgrounds and images that make the website a fun and welcoming look at the possibilities of color through BRAVIA technology. In addition to this obvious aspect of internet advertising, Sony’s ad campaign employs numerous other internet-based tactics that the average consumer would never catch on to. Tonic, the company responsible for creating the BRAVIA advert website, was also hired to amplify the natural popularity of consumer-generated input through a five-prong internet marketing strategy. Tonic’s contributions to the campaign include a blog fodder site, blog seeding campaign, a 2-stage video banner campaign with streaming videos and rich media MPU’s, a new online BRAVIA product module on Sony’s One Destination Website, BRAVIA themed games and animation on the advert website (above) and an internal communication campaign, all of which have broadened the campaign’s audience with minimal spending (iMedia). Furthermore, the success of the campaign is also due in large part to Immediate Future Inc., an online Public Relations agency focused on expansion through social media. Immediate Future was hired to add context to Tonic’s digital asset creations, discreetly building momentum and excitement for the launch of new ads on TV. Immediate Future works behind the scenes by identifying influential bloggers and securing agreements in which bloggers would favorably depict the BRAVIA, hyping up the commercials and online adverts as well as providing links to the BRAVIA website. Because of online Public Relations work, upon typing “advert” into Google, http://www.bravia-advert.com/ takes second and third place in natural search listings. Furthermore, the online outreach has created over 40,000 links to the site from online blogs (iMedia). Instead of creating a campaign based on television, the Sony BRAVIA ad campaign uses television merely to supplement online advertising. Through its revolutionary use of the internet, Sony has brought about its product’s success through social networking and bringing people together.
The internet based nature of Sony’s BRAVIA campaign rests in its ability to make consumers choose to watch the ads, just as they should choose to purchase the television. Of all aspects of this campaign, the one prevalent throughout is its reliance on community: whether it be the community of viewers witnessing the commercial at the same time, the community of witnesses creating their own versions of BRAVIA’s public events, the community of bloggers that choose to share their ideas and spread the word about BRAVIA on the web, or the community of consumers defined by ownership of a Sony BRVIA brand television. Sony’s ad campaign creates a diverse community of interest united by the awe of technological prowess and creative energy employed in the making of each advertisement. It is in this way that Sony successfully legitimizes its price premium: just as BRAVIA commercials drew crowds to witness spectacular events, so too will BRAVIA’s spectacular color, picture, and technology draw a crowd at home.
Works Cited
Bhaskaran, Lakshmi. “Case Study 3: Sony ‘Balls’” D & AD’s Creativity Works 6. 2006.
“Creative Showcase: Bravia Goes Viral.” iMedia Connection. June 22, 2006.
http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/9965.asp
“Sony Bravia: The Launch of ‘Paint’.” Immediate future.
Online-pr/case-studies/sony-bravia%3a-the-launch-of-%27paint%27-200704113
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Story, Louise. “The High Price of Creating Free Ads.” The New York Times. May 26,
2007.
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Wallace, David Foster. “
Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.
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