From Sony Style to Sony vending
The New York Times reports on Sony’s current experiment with vending machines. The machines are programmable robotic sales stations, vending everything from small electronics and Memory Sticks to Sony digital downloads (think
music, movies, ebooks). Just tap the touch screen, swipe your credit card, and you’re good to go.
A few months ago I came across a similar Apple iPod vending machine in Macy’s in San Francisco. It was located in the basement, in the walkway leading to Macy’s food court. It was a smaller machine than the one pictured, and if you didn’t look twice, you’d walk right by it, mesmerized by the aromas from Wolfgang Puck’s.
A convenient way to downgrade the brand
My thought then: these machines are a convenient way to downgrade the brand. And I have the same reaction to this initiative by Sony.
Vending machines use a commodity process to sell a branded good. That may be fine for Diet Coke and Snickers, but when your brand has aspirations of engaging customers across multiple life-fronts (memories, images, music) the “vending experience” doesn’t offer much traction.
These particular machines promise to reduce Sony’s cost of sales while providing Sony with its own (robotic) sales force to offer programmed upsell offers without fail. (That’s the reason for the touch screen. It’s there to sell more to you, not to bring you closer to the brand.)
With these machines there is no “service” to speak of, and probably no deals. And returns are a bit problematic.
Why not automatic brand building machines?
What would it take to upgrade these vending machines into automatic brand building machines?
Sony might already have the answer to this question. The company is famous for its robotic expertise, exemplified by its charming robotic dog, Aibo. Why not import some of that charm into these machines? Give them character. Emotions. A voice. Maybe some low-level AI behaviors. Make interacting with them a truly memorable experience.
Raise them from a dumb sales channel into an interactive brand channel.
Do something unique that customers can find nowhere else.
Isn’t that what Sony is all about in the first place?