SONY - Michael Bernard McKeon

Working for a company with such a strong market share and brand presence groomed me to be a more meticulous designer by always prioritizing the overall brand positioning over individual projects. To date, Sony still has some of the strongest brand guidelines I’ve come across, a true testament to their uncompromised vision and standards.

Handling all the graphics and messaging for Sony’s retail stores allowed me the opportunity to take projects from pixel to paint. This forced me to think about how my on-screen, 2D graphics would live in a real world, three-dimensional retail space for customers to interact with. The lessons I learned still come in handy each and every day.

ROLE: Art Direction / Copywriting / Branding / Photo Direction / Packaging / Interactive

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Bravia 3D

Historically, Sony has always been at the forefront of groundbreaking technology, often times long before the general public is ready to accept them into their homes. BRAVIA 3D televisions were no different and presented a number of marketing hurdles to overcome in order to be accepted by the masses. If we wanted customers to purchase expensive televisions that required sitting on their sofas wearing a pair of glasses, we needed to immerse them in the excitement of Sony’s 3D World.

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EXPERIENTIAL
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IN-STORE DISPLAYS
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Eco-Innovations

It’s easy to tout your latest products and technological breakthroughs, but in order to build a true brand following you need to let your customer-base know about your core values and what drives you to be better. In Sony’s case, most people were unaware of the monumental efforts they had made to reduce their carbon footprint. While this could have been achieved in a simple e-mail blast or subtle messaging on packaging, the more powerful approach was to turn it into a full fledged campaign. The result was Eco-Innovations.

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RETAIL WINDOWS
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IN-STORE DISPLAYS
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Sony_Eco_1

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ALTUS

Music everywhere. Wires nowhere. That is the basis of the Altus Wireless Music System. Since the product itself literally decluttered your home, the graphics and supplementary messaging needed to be just as clean, sleek and minimal. At the time, only a select few companies were offering this type of technology, so there needed to be a certain degree of accessability in both the visual approach and the user experience. The microsite and in-store experience were designed in such a way that potential buyers walked away inspired by the ease and simplicity of the system.

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PIIQ

There was a time when you wouldn’t even think of wearing headphones from a brand other than Sony. As the creator of the walkman, they became the pioneering fathers of mobile music. But like anything else in technology, competitors clone your successes while improving your shortcomings, taking a sizable bite of your market share. Before long, you can find yourself looking up at the very companies who were formerly in your rearview mirror. Such was the case with Sony’s headphone offerings by the mid 2000’s, particularly the newly established action sports market which had become a massive revenue stream within the category. Sony had fallen behind the curve, losing out to rivals with a subpar product being swallowed up thanks to superior marketing. The challenge was to show that not only were Sony headphones still the best in sound quality, but that they were just as capable of complementing the highly-stylized lifestyles of millennials.

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