Dear Sony, you shat the bed.

In about a week it’ll be seven years since the Playstation 4 arrived, and a few days since its highly anticipated successor, the PS5, was ‘officially released’ in this country.

That is, if anyone could get their hands on one.

2020 has been a cruel year and it seems when the chips are down, the chips go down. An issue with the PS5’s main chip created a shortfall of 4 million units. That’s roughly thirty-thousand-million New Zealand dollars. Big biscuits in virtual currency, let alone real dosh.

Even those who struck it lucky with the pre-order fiasco have since found that their PS5 may be drip-fed in parts. The equivalent of buying a car and getting sent a steering wheel while you wait for the rest.

In August, Sony’s first global ad spot told us ‘play has no limits’. I’m sure the irony of that statement is not lost on Sony marketeers now it seems ‘play has no console’.

That ad wasn’t our first glimpse of the PS5. We’ve been teased with orchestrated rumours, sneak-peeks and industry hype for a while now.

And let’s not forget the global pandemic. While it created short-term production challenges, CoVid should’ve been Christmas-come-early for console manufacturers. The gaming economy was already soaring without a tail wind. All of a sudden populations had to stay home for long periods of time, entertaining themselves and their families. Unsurprisingly time spent gaming exploded.

It was all building beautifully towards a release that should’ve seen Sony’s new console line the Christmas trees of privileged kids all over the world, and the coffers of Sony HQ over in Tokyo, Japan.

Alas, it wasn’t to be.

But this is not about the misfortune of technical failure, and its impact on the top line. This is about the idea that strategy isn’t static. A good strategy helps you pivot and, in Sony’s case, turn a curveball into a beautiful-immersive-pixel-streaming-snowfall.

Spoiler alert: it won’t be snowing consoles this Christmas

After missing out on a preorder, and feeling the imminent burden of Christmas shopping, I decided to pop in to my local game retailer. A national franchise network that you’d assume had a fairly good line-in to Sony. I was met by a languid, translucent, impossibly tall adolescent. Hardly surprising. What was surprising were the words he muttered after I asked for an update on PS5 supply – ‘no idea man, your guess is as good as mine’.

While I’m sure he wasn’t keeping strictly to the script, it was obvious that he was genuinely in the dark. No company line. No PR spin. No suggestions of follow-up action. Just mild bemusement and not-so-mild body odour.

This got me to thinking. Where the hell is Sony’s Plan B. And why have they not seen opportunity in disaster? How are they helping retailers? While it might be hard to claw back the thousands-of-millions-of-dollars they’ve lost, they could at least make a dent. If your strategy is the ‘product sells itself’ and suddenly you can’t sell the product, why would you stand still?

And with Microsoft’s competition product, the X-Box series X, rumoured to have its own production concerns, surely there’s even more reason to make an effort.

But what to do?

Irrespective of the root-cause, short-supply can be a powerful strategy for increasing demand. Ask Lewis Road. It’s a trick that has been used for years to jumpstart sales, increase conversion or boost brand desirability. It requires three things:

1. A new product and a lack of enticing alternatives (at the time of writing X-Box was still not released)
2. Clear communications with markets and retailers (via advertising, PR, and retailer relationships)
3. Careful timing, with sequencing coordinated around the communications plan

In this case conditions were ripe for Sony to pivot. As a starter for 10, how about:

• Change the communications focus from the failure of the chip to the power of the chip, and tell an engaging story to explain why there is a scarcity. ‘Production challenges’ is hardly an engrossing narrative
• Launch a follow-up ad spot that shifts the messaging from mass ‘we are all explorers, there are new worlds to explore’ to exclusive; ‘be the chosen one’, ‘stand where others fear to tread’, ‘carve your own path’ etc
• Stand up a microsite to communicate to fans, retailers and prospective buyers. Use to offer real-time updates and opportunities to be ‘next in line’. Demonstrate gameplay to remind people what they’re waiting for
• Create digital assets that reinforce scarcity, rather than run away from it. Countdown timers, low-stock notices, exclusive badges, competitions, social proofing, real-time sales data. Share them with retailers to use on their own websites. Syndicate content. This will increase conversion and/or keep people on the hook, rather than sending them off to spend their Christmas cash elsewhere
• Offer tiered shipping (or add-ons) to increase average order value, give people a sense of control, and make some margin back in the process
• Give retailers the tools to control the narrative. Be transparent and offer certainty to help retailers feel confident about offering pre-pay options to customers in consideration mode.

Of course this is all quick and dirty back-of-a-napkin stuff. There’s plenty of other tactics Sony could pull from the scarcity marketing playbook, if it wasn’t already far too late.

Instead the ‘play has no limits’ ad continues to run. Dull articles about chip failures and compromised production capacity continue to appear and, as Christmas rapidly descends, no-one can tell us how to give our money to one of the biggest brands in the world.

I’m sorry Sony, but you’ve really shat the bed on this one.