Strange doings with the Sony VAIO brand
Something strange appears to be happening with the upscale Sony VAIO laptop brand, if the recent report in PC Pro is correct, Sony is apparently planning to split the VAIO brand into two parts, a top-tier “division one” and a lesser “division two.” The “division one” VAIO brand will feature the latest and greatest Sony technology and design, and will be manufactured by Sony in traditional VAIO execution. The new “division two” VAIO’s will feature less advanced/older technologies and will be designed and built by others, although they will still bear the traditional VAIO brand.
Which “division” is the real VAIO?
A few brand strategy questions beg to be answered. In Sony’s new scheme of things, which “division” is the real (authentic) VAIO brand? Is it the all-Sony top-tier “division one,” or the sub-tier “division two” version to be outsourced? Which one delivers the authentic VAIO experience that distinguishes Sony in the PC marketplace? If both are equally “VAIO,” why do we need two divisions? And why is one part of the VAIO brand to be farmed out? That sure sounds like a line of products with less “Sony” and less “VAIO” in it.
An invitation to brand dilution
If you split your premium brand into two tiers with the lower tier designed and manufactured by third parties, yet still bearing the high-prestige name, you’re on a path that invites brand dilution. A brand of specific, known qualities is being stretched to cover a line of lower qualities. Less “real brand” reaches the customer, and the brand risks becoming a brand in name only. A classic example is the widely-mocked Ford Mustang II, which was really a cheaper/weaker Ford Pinto re-badged with the famed Mustang muscle-car brand to help sales.
From Jalopnik on the Mustang II dilution:
When a company does all that work to build a brand you’d think they’d be careful about letting it go to crap for a couple of extra bucks. But companies love extra bucks and, when nothing else is going for them, they can always leverage awareness.
Can a brand we watered down by such a marketing ploy? It would seem so.
The VAIO brand reduced to a VAIO “taste” and “style”
You might insist, as Sony does in the PC Pro account, that the “division two” VAIO’s will have a “taste of VAIO, the style of VAIO,” but this doesn’t sound very VAIO. From a unique brand essence we’ve descended to a kind of brand flavor. It’s as if the VAIO brand could be reduced to a mist and sprayed on these lesser VAIO’s as they fly out someone else’s door. This would serve to depreciate the traditional VAIO brand, and brand experience. Would anyone be fooled by such marketing hocus pocus? Traditional VAIO customers—those most loyal to the high quality, high performance VAIO brand—would certainly feel that their brand is being diminished.
Preserving brand integrity
As I see it, what’s at risk here is the VAIO brand integrity. Brands are brands because they’re the irreducible real deal, not an add-on “taste” or “style”. They raise customers to new levels through their very integrity, values and purpose. Brands draw the line on compromise. This planned move by Sony (if true) reduces the VAIO brand to marketing make believe. That can’t be what Sony really wants.
(I do note, however, that the tagline of the Sony brand is: “make. believe.”)
