SONY ELECTRONICS | 180LA

Sony was facing an in-aisle issue. When shoppers were stopping by their local retailer, like Best Buy, and looking at all of the TVs on the wall, it was hard to tell what made any of them different. Aren’t they just all TVs? Don’t they all do the same thing? Can’t I watch my favorite show on any of them and feel the same?

Our strategic brief to the creative team was all about the “sea of sameness” between the top brands: LG, Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, etc. In addition to that Sony was seen as an old brand- “Your parent’s brand”. Branding nightmare.

So, how do we make Sony more relevant to current buyers and stand out amongst the competitors? Enter: Autotune The News + Justin Timberlake + Peyton Manning. We started with a three spot TV campaign featuring Justin Timberlake and Peyton Manning (at the time both were completely cool. Today, probably just JT would’ve made the cut— sorry, Manning!). We had our real-life scenario spot “These all look the same!” and we had a more playful one. And another about 3D TV (guess that didn’t really take off the way they thought it would, did it?). to really drive home that they aren’t all the same and why. Then we worked with the genius brothers from Autotune the News (they were totally H-O-T at the time…again, I don’t think this strategy aged-well but it was SUPER fun at the time). We had them Autotune our ad to make it FUNNY and we bought in-banner video units and did Youtube promotion to get it out there.