We did the podcast with Rick Clancy, Senior VP of Corporate Communications of Sony today and it went very well – keep an eye out for it on their official Sony Electronics Blog. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to ask them the questions you guys submitted to us when we made the topic, “What do you want to ask Sony?” They have hinted we will have another podcast in the following weeks where we get to ask them questions, so stay tuned. Here is the cheat sheet I used for the podcast, which I thought you may find interesting:
What inspired you to start Sony Insider?
Rick, It feels like there are an overwhelming number of technology blogs out there. The news is first come, first serve and it can be difficult to catch up even if you miss a week. The world needed a true voice and a true sense of community for the Sony brand. It was almost impossible to find a well-designed, yet clear and unbiased source for the latest Sony news on the Internet – information was very scattered and reminiscent of the corporate structure found within Sony during the mid to late 90’s. Many silos, but none of them were speaking to one another. Often, you would find incredible product reviews, recommendations for future products, or compilations of software issues that seemingly went unnoticed across various forums. Sony Insider is about creating unity by centralizing the news and the people’s voice.
It had to be something different, something that nobody else was doing.
At one point, Akio Morita once said that “A company will get nowhere if all of the thinking is left to management.”
I agree with that, but Mr. Morita’s sentiment has to now adapt with the current consumer electronics atmosphere. It is obvious that a company cannot afford to be oversensitive to the whimsical desires of a concentrated group and must maintain their original vision, but the corporate world has woken up and realized that the people’s voice isn’t just found in surveys anymore, but rather their natural discussions found on blogs, forums, and so forth. This new style will extend for decades to come and is what I consider to be the humble beginnings of an untaught era in consumer and corporate relations. I truly believe Sony’s outreach to Sony Insider is proof of this sentiment; instead of Sony asking me to shut the site down as I once feared, we are sitting here discussing it instead.
The primary goal of Sony Insider is to create an atmosphere where people can come together in a spirit of teamwork, and exercise to their heart’s desire the ability to influence this brand through their feedback. We still have a long way to go before things are at the level I desire, but anything can happen if Sony Insider and Sony work hard enough to achieve that vision. With Sony’s cooperation I feel that things will only get better for the site and its users.
Who do you see as your primary audience?
From the beginning, I never really saw a target audience because Sony a universal brand. You can purchase a Sony product just about anywhere, hence you will get an opinion and interest about Sony products just about anywhere. It’s almost impossible for someone to live their life without interacting with a Sony product, whether it be your alarm clock, your television, or perhaps a television show/event you are watching that is being shot through a Sony broadcast camera. Sony Insider has received hits from every single country in the world at this point. While the majority of our traffic comes from the United States, UK and other English speaking countries, we are seeing healthy traffic from the BRIC market, Africa, and even remote islands scattered about our oceans. We’re always looking for ways to expand the audience, and just like Sony – we want the world’s attention. Often, we bring the news from all over the world to guarantee that – through our native language-speaking associates who help us translate Sony’s press releases in Japan, China, and Europe. Hopefully, in 2009, we will begin to offer Sony Insider in different languages.
I like the fact that through the blog’s simple and organized design even the most tech-thirsty consumer who enjoys Sony products can feel just as comfortable using the site as someone who has limited knowledge. Often, a big breaking story revealed at midnight my time on one day will still be clearly visible to someone who visits the site far later in the day, or the day after.
What sort of information do you try to convey?
At first, I wasn’t even sure myself what we wanted to cover. However, it’s easy to see that some people like to bully Sony. There needed to be an unbiased voice, as Sony’s reputation on the Internet has been damaged in recent years from Sonicstage woes, the rootkit debacle, overheating batteries, and so on. Those were difficult days for Sony, and it became clear someone needed to step up and show the good along with the bad. There is a lot of positive things Sony is doing out there that not many people know about. We want to bring a more human face to the company, rather than leave consumers with the impression that it is just a monotonous monolithic mega-corporation like IBM decades ago. A recent example is how Sony China donated more than half a million dollars to help rebuild a couple of schools devastated by the massive earthquake that occurred there. Or how Sony is taking an innovative role and integrating its electronics into the lobby of the ultraswank Gansevoort South hotel in Miami, Florida.
Some of the first few postings were mostly related to product announcements and technologies Sony was working on. The biggest traffic has come from product leaks, FCC information, or translating a Sony Japan product announcement that you just know will be a worldwide product – like the Cybershot T700. We try to convey our hand-picked Sony information, rumors, and reviews and everything inbetween that we feel are most important to the consumer and the company.
In 2009 we will start doing more product reviews by working with Sony to receive access to their products like other major websites such as CNET, engadget, and gizmodo. As time goes on, we will be offering more interviews with Sony figures, more exclusive coverage, a regular podcast that will start in 2009, and more consistent updates to Sony Insider Video, a personal project I am very proud of.
A dream of mine would be to visit every facility of Sony, and to try to meet and know every single employee. With this personal dialog, I would then invite them to e-mail me whenever they wish and tell me about something cool they’ve come up with or a problem they’re having. If it was appropriate, I would then write about it on Sony Insider so the world could see how we are thinking from the inside out.
How would you compare this site to some of the other fan-based sites like those focused on the Mac community?
Sony Insider is very similar to other fan-based sites in the Mac community. They cover all aspects of the company’s existence, from good to bad, and inspire brand loyalty through their perspective. However, we feel there is less fanaticism and more realism with Sony Insider. Our visitors do not incessantly praise Sony and think that it is the end solution to all of our consumer electronic needs. Our visitors use many different brands, but have an attraction to Sony products because it is a brand name you can usually believe in, a consumer trust built on countless years of innovative features and attractive designs.
Sometimes I feel like there is a real learning curve when it comes to those Mac sites – it feels like a high school clique. When I look at Sony Insider, it feels more generalized and more consumable by the public. I wouldn’t necessarily call Sony Insider a model for a consumer-driven brand-specific blog, but we are getting there.
We also have a huge interest in offering unique, in depth content. We follow the news, but we also like to dig for it. We pride ourselves in having Sony news before the Sony news reaches everywhere else. We separate ourselves from other technology blogs by having Sony news first.
What’s your day job?
Well, I am a Partner in a consulting company, UP Inc., founded by a great inspiration of mine, Cheiri Lowry – Cheiri is a coach for the top agents in the Keller Williams Real Estate company as well as an independent life coach. I keep the gears of the business grinding as efficiently as possible so she can handle as many clients as possible without sacrificing the quality of the experience. I am helping her put together a book called Enlightened, Evolving, Emerging: The Enlightened Leader which should be completed towards the end of 2009. I am also pursuing a bachelor’s degree in business marketing at Kennesaw State University here in Georgia. I also administrate two other domains, Minidisc Community Forums and ATRACLife.
How have your opinion of Sony evolved since the early days of your MiniDisc site through your time now with the Sony Insider?
When I joined the Minidisc.org team at the beginning of this decade, Sony had a lackluster Internet presence and the iPod was barely a household name. Initially, I joined the forum as a fan of the product I had received for Christmas – a MZR-700 Minidisc recorder. I used it to record myself playing bass guitar and I loved the quality. There wasn’t much of a community for me to share it with, however. So, I took the initiative and built the forum up into a community that could support each other and share their works because Sony wasn’t doing it and it had that potential. Things quickly accelerated with the site and suddenly we were the top resource for Minidisc information, support, and product announcements.
More importantly, I started to notice that consumers were using the forums when they had problems with Sonicstage and out of those discussions we built comprehensive FAQ’s. We were all helping each other to ensure that we had the most optimal product experience by making it successful for everyone. Sony was quietly watching in the background, and we all knew it, as our recommendations for future Minidisc products and Sonicstage fixes were being implemented – Sony realized we were a voice for the product, and catered to us. It was truly impressive.
As Minidisc faded out, so did my interest and I went on to make a new website called ATRACLife. ATRACLife was similar to Minidisc – it had the latest news as well as hardware and software support. As ATRACLife grew and became a trusted resource for Sony audio players and other ATRAC devices, so did its influence and that’s when I started to receive direct contact from people within Sony who wanted to help. Without realizing it, I had transformed myself from a consumer to a leader. We worked closely with Sony audio engineers in California, manifested a rich 3rd-party software environment, and also ran a contest with Sony Europe giving away a couple of Video Walkmans. I visited the Consumer Electronics Show in 2006 and met with many people in Sony, all of whom were very supportive and helpful to what I was doing.
Months before the end of ATRACLife I purchased the domain name Sony Insider. I remember wanting to do it because I had limited myself in the past with the other sites because we were only covering certain aspects of technology and not something bigger, like an entire brand. I also felt confident enough in buying the domain name because I had a gut feeling things were different now with Sony, as they proved to me in the past, and the way they spoke to their consumers. I felt like I could make Sony Insider, and as long as it wasn’t overtly negative, they would treat it like the valuable consumer resource it is and cater to it accordingly. My dream came true when, after only a few months of running the site, I was contacted by the Corporate Communications team. Their enthusiasm and guidance with the site has been very powerful, and very exciting. The consumers can see it too, which really gives that human side to the company that I’ve been spending so many years trying to deliver.
