While we are on the subject of short-term memory, it was only a few years ago that Sony was hailed as an uber-brand for the new millennium. Praised for its constant product innovation, well-developed marketing communications programme and strong support for its retail partners, Sony had a UK market share by value of more than 20% in the highly-fragmented consumer electronics market.
So now we are expected to believe Sony faces a bleak future, if, indeed, it has a future. That position is scarcely credible. Despite the depth of its strategic problems, there is a way back for what is still one of the world's strongest brands.
One popular assessment of Sony's problem, is that it is a business stretched too thinly across markets including electronics, entertainment and semiconductors.
The argument is that trying to be all things to all people does not work in an era when convergence has brought smaller, sexier brands with loyal followings to separate parts of the consumer electronics market.
Were Sony to retrench and attempt to achieve excellence in fewer core areas, it would be travelling in the opposite direction to strategies that have seen Apple enter the digital music market with iPod, Samsung make a success of mobile phones, and Microsoft make headway in games consoles with Xbox. In truth, these brands would happily be in the same markets, if not the same predicament, as Sony.
Much has been made of the arrival of Howard Stringer, Sony's first foreign chairman. It may well signal a willingness to embrace fresh thinking to deal with the threat of stronger competition, but Stringer's focus will be on making the disparate divisions work better together, rather than on retreating from certain markets.
Being biggest is not always easiest, but it does give a brand resilience against errors. Sony has not travelled so far away from the recognition and trust that its brand has generated for so long - and that is worth remembering.
Sony seeks new beginning, page 16
MARKETER'S DIARY
20 March: One Knight Only, Theatre Royal, Haymarket, London. Variety show in aid of the Tsunami victims.
22 March: Hollis Sponsorship Awards, Cafe Royal, London.
23 March: Morrisons supermarkets announces full-year results.
24 March: NSPCC launches quarterly Your Family magazine.
30 March: The Imperatives digital awards, Cafe de Paris, London. Rewarding excellence in digital marketing.
31 March: EU business and consumer survey, detailing business and consumer activity this month.
1 April: British & International Franchise Exhibition, Olympia, London.
4 April: Circulation, Editorial & Promotions Conference and Insight Research Conference, Hilton Birmingham Metropole.
Diary data supplied by foresightonline.co.uk.
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