Sony Ericsson - I Love Music

I've noticed this ad campaign around in the past few months, and I've been impressed with how clever it is. Let's have a look at one of the TV adverts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJnNGAbXqsM

The great thing about this ad campaign is that it subverts what we expect to see with what it wants to advertise. Try saying one of the phrases; for example "I (sony ericsson logo) the rain" without saying "I love." It's just natural. The heart symbol is so often used as a substitute for the word Love that it's imprinted in our conciousness. It's much like the fact that it doesn't matter what order the letters in a word are because the brain recognises the word by the first and last letters. It doesn't matter what you actually see here, your brain tells you different.

The agency to thank for this are Wolff Olins, a branding agency with over 40 years in the business. They also do a lot of work for Orange, and are responsible for the questionable London 2012 logo.

"Mobile phone brands all talk about technology, backed up by fashion imagery that usually shows unattainable lifestyles. We helped Sony Ericsson to be different, and to talk to customers not about handsets or fashion, but about the things they love doing. Not MP4 but music, not megapixels but taking photos. We developed a vibrant range of colours which stand out and allow the brand to constantly refresh itself."

They've really hit the nail on the head here. It's kind of like what happened when Apple stopped selling computers and started selling lifestyle accessories. Suddenly, the consumer could identify with and understand the product. People don't want to know about the specifications of a product - they want to know what it does and what it looks like.

Since the campaign was introduced, the company's sales ballooned. Although Sony Ericsson have always had a trendy, stylish image, they had struggled to win market dominance from the likes of Nokia, and at last, they had an ad campaign that was memorable and clever. At last, someone at Sony Ericsson realised that the key to selling large quantities of anything is to sell it as a lifestyle accessory, and not just as a tool. To sell it as something people want to be seen with, and as something that allows people to appear as more than they actually are.