AV Specialists ‘Vital’ to Home 3D, Sony’s Fasulo Says

Fasulo met with members the PRO executive board late Monday and hammered home the theme that Sony is committed to the health of AV specialists, he said. “Specialists can thrive” in the 3D era, and if they do, “the consumer experience can be a better one,” he said. To help specialists, Sony last year introduced a minimum-advertised pricing policy on premium video products, and “every note I've gotten from specialists” has been positive, Fasulo said. So successful was that MAP policy, Fasulo said, that Sony soon will introduce a MAP program for “premium” digital imaging products that will require an in-store demonstration.

Fasulo and Sony Electronics President Stan Glasgow predicted that 2010 won’t be a big year for 3D TV sales. “I do not believe this is a year for gangbuster sales,” Fasulo said. Rather, he sees this as a year for “great education” in 3D, he said. Adoption rates in 3D TV “will be very weak” this year, Glasgow said. He has heard sales projections in 3D TV ranging from as low to a million sets to as high as 5 million, Glasgow said. He puts more stock in the “lower end” of those projections, he said.

Still, Sony will advertise and promote 3D TV heavily this summer and again in Q4, Fasulo said. The efforts will trumpet Sony’s leadership “from the lens to the living room” in 3D, he said. Sony wants to seed in consumers’ minds that the first 3D TV they buy ought to be a Sony, Glasgow said. “We're going to go after share this year” in 3D TV, Fasulo said.

There’s widespread agreement that “it’s not hard to create 3D, but it’s hard to create good 3D,” Glasgow said. There must be “50 different flavors of 3D,” depending on picture resolution, sequencing between left and right eyes, glasses, he said. The challenge is “getting consumers to understand which flavors they like better, which ones they like less,” and Sony is testing that, he said. Sony has consulted with the medical community and has found that consumers who have had Lasik surgery performed on one or both eyes can’t see 3D very well, Glasgow said. “We have to figure out a glasses solution to that. They may also be a software solution.” Opthamologists have told Sony that nearsightedness among adults has skyrocketed since the 1970s because they have watched too much TV at close distances to the screen and haven’t properly exercised their eyes, Glasgow said. With all the thought expressed that 3D might be detrimental to eye health, Sony’s research has found that it actually may be “beneficial” as a means of getting TV viewers to exercise their eyes, he said.

Other Sony comments: (1) The “Sony United” concept of co-marketing products with other Sony divisions is “beginning to work better and better,” Fasulo said. As one example, Sony bundled a PS3 with a Bravia LCD TV sold through Sony Style stores and set a one-day sales record on Nov. 21, he said. (2) Sony is pleased with the success of the HDNA commercial it ran fourth quarter of the Super Bowl starring Justin Timberlake and Peyton Manning, Fasulo said. “Metrics came back very positive” he said. Among consumers tested, the message has 60 percent “recall,” compared with messages that test at 20-25 percent and are deemed “above average,” he said. More importantly, the spots’ “call to action” rate was 15 percent, meaning the ad drove that many consumers to visit a retail store. The industry average is below 10 percent, he said. Sony sales jumped 13 percent during the campaign, he said. Sony will debut another “platform"-based series of spots in April, he said.