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Sony goes chic @ retail

By Bhawana Anand | September 12, 2013

Seeking to top the smartphone charts is Sony Mobile, which has come out with a water resistant new phone, the Xperia Z phone. The brand made a stylish splash of it at retail across stores in US with glamorous models showcasing the different features of the phone. Point-of-Purchase brings you the details of the international activity.

A controlled retail environment allows an advertiser to showcase products in much more playful manner, going beyond traditional displays and demonstrations. This in-store activation by Sony Mobile proves just that. Leveraging the retail space to the best extent possible, the brand demonstrated the product highlights of its new smart phone Xperia Z phone in a unique manner. Sony Mobile partnered with T-Mobile and organized a live demonstration of the water resistant quality of the phone. The activity showcased swimsuit clad models taking the Xperia Z under Xperia-branded shower in the window displays, proving that the soaked phone could withstand any amount of water.  Also, consumers who tweeted the showering models with the hash tag won a chance to win the handset. The program was developed by iris Worldwide, Sony Mobile's channel activation agency. The activations were launched at different high-end stores located in cities such New York, Miami and Chicago with additional events taking place at Minneapolis, Santa Monica and Wilshire in US.

The objective of this activity was to create an engaging, traffic driving experience in the stores and generate enough around the product. Another aim was obviously to drive people into the T-Mobile stores to purchase the Xperia Z and spread the word about its water resistant features and other design features via social media.

Ashley Grice, Managing Director, iris worldwide Atlanta, comments on the activation, "We were tasked to come up with a campaign that would engage consumers with the product in a fun and unique way, and at the same time, give them the opportunity to experience first-hand the Xperia Z's water resistance. This activity is designed to do just that in a way that will get people talking.”

The whole activity was coordinated to entice Smartphone users looking for a phone that fits their active lifestyle.  The phone, which can reportedly withstand just about anything like rain water, pool water etc, was placed on a vertical highlight panel in 400 of the top selling T-Mobile stores.  The panel highlighted Sony's NFC one touch capabilities through a speaker demo (tap the Xperia Z to the Sony Bluetooth speaker to listen to music).  It also highlighted the water resistant feature through a demo dunk tank which was also created by iris agency.  What was even more engaging was that consumers got tweets from the models and had their pictures taken which were then telecast on the TV's installed at the store.

Creating a live demo of this kind surely came with several logistics and man-power challenges.  As Ashley shares, "The main challenge we faced with the shower stunt was finding store locations that would allow it from a permitting standpoint.  Additionally, the store needed to support the size of the shower and have enough window space so you could see the shower from outside given we couldn't set the shower up outside of most T-Mobile stores given landlord rules.  Also, given the budget of the project we were limited as to how many cities we could perform the stunt - which is why we only did 5 cities such as Chicago, Miami, NYC, Minneapolis, and Santa Monica.

The activity became a great device launch for Sony.  Their sales continued to increase week over week and there had been a lot of positive feedback/comments related to the device.   
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