JKR

Sony

This week's Champion of Design is Sony, the electronics brand which has become a familiar sight in households worldwide. Read about the brand lesson which we drew, outlined by Andy Knowles here...

Despite a glorious heritage, the truth is Sony has been struggling to return to form for years. Fighting on too many fronts, the business has been progressively surpassed by Apple, undercut by Samsung and outpaced by Nintendo and Microsoft.

So, perhaps a first lesson to take from Sony is that good design works hand in hand with good thinking, not as a substitute for it.

And a second is that the value of a cohesive style cannot be underestimated when brands extend far and wide. Despite continuing to exhibit flair in the styling of individual products, Sony was starting to emulate the competition rather than craft their own common look. In today’s market, it isn’t good enough to market a disparate range of products and hope to bind them together with just a logo. The risk is the whole becomes less than the sum of the parts.

The good news at Sony is that over the last five years, CEO Howard Stringer has quietly affected a revolution by stealth and Sony’s latest generation products harness their always-innovative technology to a more alluring style. It can’t be a coincidence that the underlying business appears to be returning to form.

Perhaps the big lesson from Sony is that a strategic approach to design is no longer a luxury, it’s a necessity.

For the full article, see this week's Marketing magazine.