April 15, 2004
Finding Glamour in the Gadget
By SETH SCHIESEL
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Web Edition Editors' Note Is Appended
Ellen Glassman was explaining the four-minute nature film she is producing.
“We want to create that feeling of awe, of being inspired,” she said, explaining that her team had trekked from Puerto Rico’s rain forests and beaches to California’s sequoias to the snowcaps of Mount Shasta in search of just the right images. “We want that emotional feeling you get looking over an incredible vista or looking closely at a leaf. We want someone to feel the same way holding the 016 camera.”
The what?
Ms. Glassman, as it happens, is not a filmmaker by profession, but a designer for Sony. And the project is part of an effort to redefine the way consumers — or at least certain, well-heeled consumers — think about electronic devices. At a moment when cellphones are becoming fashion accessories and rap stars carry diamond-encrusted two-way pagers, Sony plans next week to announce the American debut of a premium brand and product line meant to elevate electronics from the status of mere tool to coveted luxury good.
Initially anchored by a $3,900 miniature digital camera, a $15,000 stereo system, a $12,000 television and a $30,000 home-theater projector, the product line, called Qualia, is intended to compete with (and complement) fancy cars, furs and rare wines, rather than the rows of anonymous boxes at Best Buy or Circuit City. From the nature film to the products’ oblique numbering system (the projector is formally known as Qualia 004, for instance) to the by appointment-only showroom under construction in Midtown Manhattan, Sony is meticulously calibrating every aspect to exploit and influence the psychology of consumerism.
“We want Qualia to change the way that people relate, emotionally, to these technologies,” said Ken Sugawara, head of the United States Qualia team.
Consumer electronics have long had a high end, notably in the audiophile world of $10,000 turntables, $15,000 amplifiers and $50,000 loudspeakers. Two years ago, a Nokia subsidiary called Vertu started selling platinum cellphones for more than $20,000. And on a massmarket level, consumers who might pay $300 for a conventional television are flocking to spend $3,000 or more on flat-panel models.
With Sony’s move, a company of worldwide scope has thrown itself behind the concept of electronics as luxury. But what are luxury products, and why do people aspire to own them? Why does someone spend $3,000 on a watch when a $10 model will tell time accurately? Why does someone spend $50,000 on a fur or $100 on a cigar? Why is decorative jewelry almost as old as the human race?
There is clearly a psychological component to acquiring, owning and using such products that transcends the task that the item is nominally meant to perform — telling time, driving somewhere.
“The luxury market is not a matter of what something costs,” said Bill Curtis, chief executive of CurtCo Media, publisher of Robb Report, the luxury lifestyle magazine. “It’s a matter of the entire visceral and emotional experience attached to it. It is about being inspired by products and services, whether that means hotels, boats, cars, jewelry. And this is clearly where the best part of consumer electronics is heading.”
It is that quality that Sony is trying so hard to infuse into Qualia. In fact, the concept was developed by Ken Mogi, a Sony researcher who studies the ways in which external experience, including the use of electronic devices, elicits emotional reactions. Mr. Mogi uses the word “qualia” (the plural of a noun defined as “a quality abstracted as an independent, universal essence from a thing”) to describe those reactions — and began working four years ago to translate the idea into a product line. The first fruits were borne in Japan last year with the opening of Qualia salons in Tokyo and Osaka.
In an interview in Japan, Mr. Mogi said that over and above technical requirements, Qualia products were designed to elicit an emotional response.
“The reason why people pay a premium to get on the Concorde is not to save a few hours,” he noted of an era just ended. “There was a particular experience associated with flying on the Concorde.”
For a multinational marketing powerhouse like Sony, designing that experience — and figuring out whom it might appeal to — is practically a science. In the basement of the Sony Store on Madison Avenue, where the Qualia salon is to open in June, Steve Fisher, a Qualia marketing expert, said the primary target was “affluent, career-oriented” couples in their 40’s who “tend not to have children.”
Close behind, he said, was a category called Renaissance Women, who are also in their mid-40’s but usually have children.
“We were initially surprised, but on reflection it really is quite logical,” Mr. Fisher said. “Women are more brand-conscious than men in general, especially brands associated with fashion and style.”
The packaging is an essential part of the experience. The miniature digital camera, for example, comes in a plain white box. (“Since Qualia won’t be sold by big retail chains, there’s no need to make colorful packaging designed to stand out,” said Takashi Aoki, a Qualia marketing executive in Tokyo.)
Yet inside that box, the camera and its jewellike accessories are coddled within an elegant case of polished aluminum, stainless steel and synthetic material that seems suited for delicate scientific components or a rare musical instrument.
As for the store itself, “we’ve chosen very pearlescent fabrics, exotic zebra wood, white Italian leather, elegant panels,” Ms. Glassman said.
“We’re keeping the color palette all neutral and natural, but with a modern American aesthetic.”
Fully aware that smell is closely linked with emotion, Sony has even developed a special Qualia scent that is piped into the Qualia salons in Japan.
“Compared to the new-car smell, the Qualia scent is a much more subtle experience,” said Phil Boyle, a product specialist who is part of Sony’s Qualia task force for the United States market. (The company is unsure if it will use the scent in this country.)
According to Mr. Fisher, one of the most important aspects of the Qualia experience is giving customers (to be called “guests”) a sense that they are developing a one-on-one relationship with the company — an approach Sony has explored with its private shopping service, Cierge, which has about 5,000 members. Sony has mapped out a timeline for its dealings with Qualia customers.
In Week 1 after purchase, the customer is to receive a personalized letter from his or her Qualia concierge.
In Week 4, the customer is to get a choice of “welcoming gifts,” like tickets to a performance by Yo-Yo Ma, Bruce Springsteen or another Sony Music artist. Thereafter, the customer will receive a Qualia quarterly newsletter.
As Mr. Curtis of Robb Report put it: “The most important aspect of any luxury product now is service. It’s having someone you can call who will call you by name. If you look at Rolls-Royce or any of these other companies, when you buy that product you are suddenly a member of their club. That is a big part of what you are buying.”
That is why Sony intends to sell Qualia products by telephone, but not over the Web. “On the phone we can at least talk to the customer and make sure they really understand the product,” said Mr. Sugawara of the United States Qualia team. “Online, you just have no contact. Online, you see people buying things without really understanding them.”
But for all of the inner sense of well-being that luxury products are supposed to induce, status is also crucial to their allure. More broadly, the Qualia concept illustrates how consumer electronics are becoming a personal accessory — an expression of one’s identity — in much the way that cars evolved from a mere conveyance available in a single color to an extension of personality.
Take cellphones, for instance.
“Now, when executives come to a business meeting it’s like the O.K. Corral: everyone whips out their cellphone and puts it on the table,” said Page Murray, vice president for marketing at PalmOne, the maker of mobile electronics. “If some guy has the latest phone, it’s the first five minutes of conversation. It’s as much a part of their identity as the suit or tie they are wearing.”
That dynamic extends beyond the corporate world. That is why Palm-One created a phone covered in pink Swarovski crystals for Alison Krauss, the popular singer, to carry down the red carpet at the Oscars this year. That is why Motorola also worked with Swarovski to put a crystal-encrusted phone into Sarah Jessica Parker’s hands for “Sex and the City.” That is why Jacob the Jeweler, maker of “bling-bling” for the stars, is expanding from watches and bracelets into electronics.
“In the past six months the electronics have really taken off,” said Nicole Young, Jacob’s publicist. “People want their name monogrammed in diamonds on the cellphone or they want the pagers entirely encrusted in diamonds. We had the wife of one rapper who had a pink phone and she wanted it encrusted in pink diamonds. Well that was way too expensive, so Jacob did it in pink sapphires and white diamonds, so it was like a polka-dot effect.”
David A. Pinsky, director for entertainment marketing for Motorola, said: “As time goes by, people say, ‘I wear a certain watch, shop at a particular clothing store, drive a certain car.’ And now they want electronics products that fit into that same sense of personality and identity.”
Though most of Sony’s early Qualia products are meant to be used in the home rather than in public, many of the products in the works are meant to be portable (in addition to the camera), Sony executives said.
Still, with the emphasis on sleek, understated refinement in the Qualia line, many Sony executives would cringe at its being lumped together with the aesthetic of diamond-covered cellphones.
Each Qualia product is meant to embody the highest levels of engineering and craftsmanship — a goal that can be approached in different ways. With the two-megapixel 016 camera, for instance, Sony seems to be emphasizing miniaturization.
While Sony says that its picture quality is excellent, it will not equal that of advanced professional models. In its Qualia television, however, Sony appears to have placed picture quality ahead of design considerations. Rather than a flat-panel display, the television uses an advanced cathode-ray tube, which is far bulkier. Sony executives say that for all its shortcomings of size and weight, the C.R.T. remains the king of image quality.
Sony does not expect Qualia to become a major financial engine for the company, at least not right away. Yet re-establishing itself at the high end of the electronics market has become vital for Sony as the overall sector is largely driven by bargain commodities.
“We want to go back to Sony’s origin, to the start of the business, which was not to copy somebody else but to always create something new,” said Shizuo Takashino, the head of the worldwide Qualia group and Sony’s No. 3 executive. “We have to do this because, well, $39 Chinesemade DVD players are already being sold in Wal-Mart.”
Editors' Note for the Web Edition: An early version of this article that had not been fully edited appeared yesterday for a couple of hours on NYTimes.com. The text above is the edited, correct version.