Time and time again we witness companies putting together ad campaigns that highlight appealing aspects of their products, but how many are actually prepared to stand by those claims? It appears that Sony is on a mission to prove to the New Zealand population that its latest personal MP3 player is indeed waterproof, and have even brought a specialist advertising agency on board to try and get the message across. In conjunction with Auckland based DraftFCB, Sony has concocted the Bottled Walkman campaign that validates the waterproof claims by selling the latest Walkman MP3 player submerged in a bottle of water.
It’s certainly refreshing to see a company that believes so much in the capabilities of a product that they are willing to go to extreme lengths to prove it. Sony’s latest Walkman NWZ-W270 has been available for a little while now, and while it seems to be getting great reviews from consumers, it obviously needed a little advertising creativity in New Zealand to get things rolling. DraftFCB appear to have gone above and beyond by not only packaging and submerging the little flash storage based device in a bottle of water, but by also making it available for sale directly from vending machines across the country.
It seems like a renegade move from Sony, but it actually makes perfect sense when you consider the type of people that make use of devices like the personal Walkman. Rather than packing the shelves of local electronic stores full of the NWZ-W270, Sony is keen to get the device in front of their target audience by populating vending machines with the product in places like gyms, sports clubs and other areas of leisure. We can’t imagine that anyone will actually want to satisfy their thirst with the surrounding water that has had a Walkman sitting in it for weeks on end, but at least the vending machine will offer additional thirst-quenching options.
The NWZ-W270 was launched earlier this year with a lot of emphasis being placed on the fact that it is waterproof. The sports-friendly little device comes with 4GB of flash based storage and should meet the needs of most fitness fanatics thanks to the well manufactured waterproof construction. Here’s hoping that the Bottled Walkman campaign lands on additional shores as we would certainly purchase one, even if just for the sake of novelty.
(via: Engadget)
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