The Story of the Sony Sound Master Marketing Challenge

For people who do critical listening, a company called 'Sony' comes across as quite fascinating. It looked like it would dominate the world well with the early Walkman brand, and it was fine until the flow shifted to the CDP, but once it started releasing the MD (mini disc), it began to walk a somewhat downward path. Of course, this story is limited to the device part, and in the earphone part it pioneered a 'wireless' market in its own way, and has unfolded its business in a diverse manner spanning the 'canal,' 'open-type,' and 'headphone' segments.

Recently, I think Sony's event like the image above has an intention of specializing a bit more in the earphone and headphone field and getting closer to consumers, and personally I wish events like this existed for other companies too. When you hold an event like this, consumers can naturally come closer to the brand. A 'material' incentive is at work. Moreover, recently, as SNS has rapidly risen as a 'marketing' method, publicizing events like this through SNS would be one approach, so there's a slight regret.

As I began to take an interest in earphones, I came to know various brands such as Sennheiser, Shure, Sony, Westone, UE, image, Beyerdynamic, Ultrasone, AKG, Philips, and so on, and while trying out various products like the EX500, OMX980, K701, SHE-9850, and others, I tried tilting this way and that to figure out which direction my preference leans, but it doesn't seem to reveal itself easily. But if I could test out Sony's products a bit more through an event like this, for a somewhat light user like me it couldn't help but be a more than welcome good opportunity. The truth is that buying a high-end product isn't an easy thing. The price is the price, and it's questionable whether one can even properly evaluate the cost-performance, because the world of the 'ear' is exactly that.

In any case, this marketing is a truly good opportunity.