IFA News 2005: Sony Style (over content?)
If there was an award for the most innovative stand at IFA it would surely have to go to Sony. The ‘stand’ was more like a lavish theatrical set in which an interior designer’s imagination had been left to run riot. Walk into one room and it was a digital hall of mirrors. Walk into another and it felt like one of those Japanese hotels where you have to sleep in a tube. All the separate rooms were divided by floor-to-ceiling drapes (a bit like those you get at the car wash), leaving maximum opportunity for collision between visitors. I wouldn’t like to be in charge of that accident book.
Also the layout of the stand meant that it was quite easy to miss entire rooms altogether – it took me four attempts to find the PSPs, for example. Not great planning me thinks. Though Sony was at least living up to its ‘Like.No.Other’ tagline, most journalists thought the style of the set was really to hide a dearth of any really innovative products, a complete contrast to the neighbouring Samsung set where content, rather than style, was king.
