The Sony Coup
I need help, help of the serious kind I might add. Now what I am about to share is extremely confidential. In fact it is somewhat embarrassing, but I am going to share it with you anyway because I trust you, and I owe you. So here goes…deep breath – I am a flyer junkie. I can’t believe that I just said it, quite liberating. Yes, I am an FSI fiend. And no, I do not mean the boring stuff like your national newspaper flyers or even your “Canada’s largest circulation newspaper” junk. I am hardcore. Metroland community paper flyers are the only way to go. None of this flyerland.ca stuff for me. That is the equivalent asking a sportsfan to watch a recorded hockey game that they don’t know the outcome to. Enjoyable, but somehow not as fulfilling. Nope it must be a tactile experience in the Alibhai household.
Friday is a most anticipated day, it is when the big stack of goodies arrives, setting the tone for the weekend plans. The relationship I have developed with flyers is so personal and reliant that at one point, and I am not kidding, I even called to complain when we weren’t receiving them. It was a dreadful two weeks because I had no idea how the prices of my drug of choice (electronic items) were faring. That was a long time ago and all is good now. In fact I have even received audit calls to ensure that my flyers are being delivered. I am a happy man, or at least I was until last weekend…
Friday came and the excitement was at its peak level. The North York Mirror had finally arrived, albeit later than usual but who keeps track of these things anyway….I grabbed my Future Shop fix and it’s elder “no commission blue and yellow jacket” brother, Best Buy and set off to my study to lounge and peruse the deals of the week. My usual pattern is to scan Future Shop, top to bottom, then look at Best Buy and find comparable items to price against. The reason is simple. Find a cheaper item in the Best Buy flyer, take it to Future Shop, price match, save 10 percent and haggle as much as you can…No commission Best Buy means no negotiating room, which means no sale to Alibhai…
So here I am, my red and white comrade commanding my full attention. I take in the cover and am mildly amused. I flip the page taking a cursory glance at pages 2 and 3. At this point my amusement turns into irritation. I say to myself, “I can’t believe this, they didn’t do this.” Instead of taking in the items adorning the glossy stock pages that would normally have me salivating, I am forced to turn the page to confirm my sneaking suspicions.
Oh the horror!
That feeling of knowing what was coming next but still hoping that you could be wrong. Then the accompanying pangs of the aftermath. Feeling silly, cheated and disappointed because you knew it all along but couldn’t accept it – kind of like hoping your poker opponent doesn’t have two hearts, because you made a set on the flop that coincidently featured 2 of Cupid's suit. The turn was non factor but fifth street yielded one more Valentine - Your gut tells you something is up but your innate machismo refuses to listen - all of this from pages 4 through 7.
Brilliant and foolish all at once is my take, but you decide. The electronic version is still up for a couple of more days if you must see it.
Sony Canada managed to pay enough MDF/Coop funds to the lucrative, money making, weekly piece that only their only products (save some accessory blu-ray titles and CD’s) dominated the first 7 pages.
Bravia TV’s from series S to Z, Blu-ray players, Vaio laptops, cameras and camcorders, even the lowly $99 car deck had a place to shine. Future Shop redesigned their entire flyer layout for “Sony Days”
Brilliant. Sony had the moxie, coin (we are taking serious dollars) and product to fill up the first seven pages of a national retailer’s flyer – with distribution in the neighborhood of at least 8 million pieces, maybe even closer to 12 million pieces, I see why they did it. Big Box sales account for a very significant amount of product sales. The Sony Store is really just a brand experience, probably even a money loser…
Foolish. I can’t say if Sony moved enough product on line and in store to cover the expense. I don’t even know if that was their objective. Some may try to justify and sell the non-existent brand building merits of this initiative; I wouldn’t buy it, not even for the price match and 10% discount. Flyers don’t build brands (see Dell strategy circa 2003)
Brilliant. What a way to shut out the competition. The folks at Panasonic, Samsung, LG and the like, all who offer a similar array of products, though perhaps not to the same depth as Howard Stringer’s behemoth, must have been peeved. I mean really peeved. The ongoing battles that they have been waging with Best Buy Inc, routinely trying not to be held hostage to committing their full MDF/Coop budgets for a minuscule amount of space has just been taken to a whole new level.
Foolish. Future Shop sold out its suppliers and its customers. Those other peeved electronic manufactures mentioned above do hold some clout. But the real losers are Future Shop's bread and butter, the consumers. A flyer should, as much as possible, act as a non biased comparative shopping tool. If I, for one, were interested in a Sony Style guide I would have picked one up from the aforementioned Sony Store. Even my wife, who hardly looks at the “guy pages” commented right away that Sony must have paid mucho dinero for this. It was almost insulting because you could see right through it. But man I loved Sony for doing it.
Brilliant and foolish all at once, a non-event in the grand scheme of things.
Were I Sony I would have pushed for this execution, what a coup! Were I Future Shop I would have refused, flat out. Although I wonder, who initiated the idea?
Perhaps 2001 Audio and even, heaven forbid, The Brick flyer deserve a second chance in the Alibhai household…
