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Parker Walden

May 2, 2022

Social Media Strategy Plan

Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE)

Penn State University

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Brand Summary

Brand Introduction, History, Performance

The company name of SONY was created by combining two words of “sonus” and “sonny”. The

“sonus” in Latin represents words like sound and sonic. The other word “sonny” means little

sons. Used in combination, SONY was supposed to represent a very small group of young

people who have the energy and passion towards unlimited creations and innovative ideas.

SONY Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) was established on November 16, 1993, in Minato

City, Tokyo, Japan. When SONY Computer Entertainment Inc. was first established, they started

as a joint venture between SONY Corporation and SONY Music Entertainment Inc.

One year later, SCEI launched their company’s first video game console, the PlayStation. With a

price tag of ¥39,800, or $299, the launch came in January of 1994 but didn’t expand to North

America until months later. By 1997, there were 20 million consoles shipped worldwide. At turn

of the century, PlayStation consoles shipped worldwide came to be roughly 70 million by the

year 2000. The PlayStation 2 was released on March 3, 2000, and PlayStations 3, 4 and 5 were

all released on November 11th. The third (2006), fourth (2013) and fifth (2020) generation

consoles paved the way for millions of customers to enjoy the innovation created by SONY and

its subsidiaries.
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Seeing the yearly increase in demand from the consoles brought SONY to the conclusion of

creating a whole, new company, that would power PlayStation innovation for the next 20 years,

SONY Interactive Entertainment (SIE). SIE was established in 2016, to join forces of both SCEI

and SONY Network Entertainment, combining the strengths and talents of both companies.

SIE is a wholly owned subsidiary that is headquartered in San Mateo, California. The company’s

job is to handle SONY’s venture into future video game development for PlayStation systems.

SIE handles the research and development, production and sales of both hardware and

software for the PlayStation video game systems.

SIE operates several subsidiaries in SONY’s largest markets: North America, Europe and Asia. SIE

has also developed and published some well-known video games titles under its North

American subsidiary. Popular titles such as Days Gone, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and

the game series, God of War, have gained wanted attention due to the incredible work SONY

and SIE have put forth towards the public.

SONY’s Mission Statement, Vision Statement & Core Values

Mission statement: “At SONY, our mission is to be a company that inspires and fulfills your

curiosity.” SONY recognizes how important its products are especially in improving the life

experiences of its customers. SONY also demonstrates their commitment to supporting

innovation through various designs that also create better linkages with other companies.
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Through their technological advancement, ambitions are high to continue to be the best in

what they do.

Vision statement: “Our vision is to use our passion for technology, content and services to

deliver Kando, in ways that only SONY can.” SONY’s passion for technology is a reflection of

what drives designing competitive products for their customers. The “Kando” in the statement

represents the emotional connectivity of everyone involved with the company. Using the idea

of Kando, SONY highlights the “SONY Way” by embracing the uniqueness of the company and

what it can achieve.

SONY’s core values include Dream and Curiosity, Diversity, Integrity and Sincerity and

Sustainability. SONY’s core values ensure that SONY stays in the right direction in the

achievement of its goals. SONY believes in being innovative as doing so from a diversified

viewpoint. They recognize that these characteristics help the company to gain the ability to

sustain its reputation.

Industry

A broad classification for the type of industry SIE is in, would be the electronics industry. SONY

Corporation and SIE are engaged through electronics mostly through video games. With today’s

economy engulfed in a technological revolution, the gaming community is ever growing and

evolving.
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According to online newspaper, MedicalNewsToday, “at a glance, more than 150 million people

in the United states play video games regularly, or for at least 3 hours per week. The average

American gamer is a 35-year-old adult, with 72 percent of gamers ages 18 or older.”

“Video game sales continue to increase year on year. In 2016, the video game industry sold

more than 24.5 billon games – up from 23.2 billion in 2015 and 21.4 billion in 2014,” stated,

MedicalNewsToday.

Competitor Overview (Microsoft)

With video games having a massive increase in sales, it is no doubt that the market SONY has

brought themselves into, is a competitive one. SONY and SIE aren’t the only multi-million-dollar

game companies out there who battle to be at the top. The biggest two competitors SONY and

SIE have to deal with are Microsoft and Nintendo.

Microsoft Corporation was established by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, in

Albuquerque, NM. Gates and Allen started Microsoft for microprocessors and software, to

develop software for the Altair 8800, an early personal computer.

Seeing the early success with the PlayStation 2 console in 2000, Microsoft was concerned about

SONY’s growing popularity. Plans were initiated to create its own console gaming system in

hopes to both diversify its product line and capitalize on the thriving gaming industry.
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Microsoft came to the conclusion to open up its own version of SIE, XBOX Game Studios.

Microsoft’s XBOX Game Studios was founded in March of 2000, in Redmond WA. After the

installment, Microsoft produced their own version of a game console, the XBOX, created in

2001, with a price tag of $299. Since then, the XBOX and PlayStation consoles have

continuously competed in back-and-forth success within the video game industry.

Competitor Overview (Nintendo)

Out of the three major competitors, Nintendo has been around the longest. The company was

established on September 23, 1889, in Kyoto, Japan. Nintendo was founded by Fusajiro

Yamauchi, to produce and distribute hanafuda, (flower cards) a type of traditional Japanese

playing card.

Nintendo came out with their version of a video game console on July 15, 1983. The Nintendo

Entertainment System, (NES) was a groundbreaking eight-bit video game console created by

Japanese designer Uemura Masayuki, with a price tag of ¥14,800 or $179.

Unlike SONY or Microsoft, there isn’t a recognizable subsidiary gaming branch. There are

multiple smaller departments within the company. The Nintendo Entertainment Planning and

Development department has several subgroups working on different projects. For example,

Software Group No. 1 works on the Mario Kart series. While Software Group No. 2 works of the

Wii game series.

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SWOT Analysis – SONY Interactive Entertainment

Strengths Weaknesses

 Innovative mindset  Always running out of stock, COVID-

 Consistent with new console 19 Pandemic

production (every 6-7 seven years)  Lacks creativity in name branding

 Established as an entertainment  Lack of nostalgia with newer consoles

company

 Departments dedicated to VR

entertainment

Opportunities Threats

 Potential growth for PSVR product  Competitors consistent with great

advertisement since competitors success

don’t have it  Less consoles produced than

 Increase advertising for upcoming competitors

games-turned movies  Product pricing has only increased

since start

SoMe

To share with your audience, you need to understand who and where your audience is. SONY

Interactive Entertainment builds their video game consoles and gaming equipment for an

audience who will actively use their products for hours on end. Often times, customers of
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PlayStation equipment are people who are actively playing video games, or people who would

call themselves Gamers.

As of December 2021, SONY has sold nearly more than 10 million consoles of the newest

generation, the PlayStation 5 and roughly 3 million internationally. SONY has sold thousands of

PlayStation 5 consoles in United Kingdom, Australia, Romania, France, Ireland, Italy, Poland,

Sweden, United Arab Emirates, Germany, Demark and Japan. Since SONY and SIE has entered

the competitive gaming industry, the sharing on content has extended out past the United

States with the help of competitive E-sports events.

SONY and SIE have optimized their content through establishing professional relationships with

spokespeople, creating an intuitive tagline and even partnering up with current-day gaming

influencers.

“The idea of being immersive has definitely been one of the megatrends in the gaming industry

over the last 10 years or so,” says current CEO of SIE, Jim Ryan.

Ryan also said, “I think platform-level features like the ones you’d see such as 3D Audio and

haptic feedback being put in the hands of a great game developer are going to allow this

phenomenon of immersiveness [to be] taken to the next level. … I think you’re going to see

something really powerful and really transformational quite quickly, and that impact will grow

over the life of the platform.”

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SONY’s tagline is, “Play Has No Limits”. Only a four-worded sentence could create a world full of

endless possibilities to be put into the hand of the customers. SONY’s tagline invites the idea

that the virtual world that we want to live in, is undoubtably possible to achieve.

SONY and SIE’s overall goal was to hopefully create a tagline that would “resonate globally”. It’s

plain as day that SONY tries to push towards globalization with unified branding and global

campaigns. Even for the launch of the PlayStation 5, SONY wanted to oppose to individual

territory-based campaigns that used to run in the past.

SONY and SIE manages their messages effectively and appropriately through social media

advertisements and television commercials. It would be SONY and SIE’s best interest to

measure their products through the total of overall shipments. Not just in the United States,

but to monitor their sales globally to see which regions of the world are living up to the “SONY

Way”.

Both companies continue to do a great job at keeping the PlayStation gaming community

updated with news, stories, etc. SONY has numerous blogs that give updates that pertain to the

community associated with gaming, but more specifically, the games that SIE develop and

produce. SONY sends out a weekly blog post and allows its customers to share, like and interact

with the post.

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Lastly, SONY and SIE engage with their audience quite frequently. SONY’s official Instagram

page, with over 400,000 followers, posts every day, sometimes multiple times a day. The posts

are usually related to the next upcoming movie or game that is has yet been released. Other

posts include “Happy Birthday” shoutouts to celebrities who are partnered with SONY, like

Jennifer Lopez, Tom Holland and Harry Styles.

Social Media Audit

My brand for the Social Media Audit is SONY Interactive Entertainment. The platforms I chose

to evaluate are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The platform links are listed below:

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Sony

Twitter - https://twitter.com/Sony

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/sony-interactive-entertainment-llc/

Dates evaluated:

February 13, 2022 – February 20, 2022

Followers:

Facebook - 62,142

Twitter - 5.1 million

LinkedIn - 7,555
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Number of posts (past seven days):

Facebook - 4 total posts

Twitter - 12 total tweets

LinkedIn - no posts

Frequency:

Facebook - once a day in the evening, sometimes during the morning

Twitter - anywhere from 2-4 times a day

LinkedIn - never

Content types:

Facebook - a mixture of still photos representing video games, few minute-long videos of game

creators answering community questions

Twitter - few second videos of whatever they tweeted/retweeted, along with messages from

their partners, each posts has at least one hashtag

LinkedIn - no posts

Images:

Facebook - mainly still images, consisting of mainly the colors blue, black, white and grey,

professional theme with well-edited videos of collaborations or upcoming announcements

Twitter - with the images that SONY uses, there seems to be a constant theme of the color blue,

the color that is usually associated with their “PlayStation” theme

LinkedIn - nothing
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“Sticky” Content:

Facebook - mostly content that interests the people who either buy SONY products or people

who are interested in upcoming SONY movies, the upcoming Uncharted movie has gained a lot

of attention, mostly through likes, not comments

Twitter - posts related to upcoming events hosted by SONY or by their sponsors/partners, had a

recent collaboration with the band “Foo Fighters”, the Foo Fighter posts gained more retweets

than normal

LinkedIn - nothing shown yet

Hashtags:

Facebook - popular hashtags include #UnchartedMovie and #HorizonForbiddenWest

Twitter - popular hashtags include #SBLVI, #GTSophy & #AI (SONY’s new AI flagship organization

LinkedIn - no hashtags included

Influencers:

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn: SONY doesn’t associate them with major influencers, maybe in

their YouTube account but these accounts give off a professional image to go along with their

organization.

Profiles:

Facebook - the page itself acts as a product advertisement store, the description says

“Entertainment and creativity, powered by technology. The official Facebook Page for Sony.”
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Twitter - Twitter’s description is “The official Twitter for SONY”, not a lot about the description

of the company, could add more to bio.

LinkedIn - they just classify their company as part of the “Entertainment Industry”, no bio to

explain what the company does

Keep doing:

All platforms, except for LinkedIn, are getting a lot of attention towards the upcoming

Uncharted movie, specifically the actor Tom Holland, because he just recently starred in the

newest Spider-Man movie. SONY’ gaming department has highly anticipated movies coming up

this year and next; God of War, Spider-Man 2 and Horizon: Forbidden West. An increase in

teaser posts/trailers would increase activity on the platforms. Also, the new Spider-Man into

the Spider-verse is coming out this year, since SONY earns to rights to Spider-Man and Spider-

Man is a highly popular superhero, they could create contents on their platforms for a chance

to win some memorabilia or an autograph by one of the actors.

Stop or Revamp:

Revamp the LinkedIn page! The page itself just classifies it as part of the SONY corporation,

which has a link to the main PlayStation LinkedIn website. By starting up a LinkedIn page, this

corporation can increase employment for the company.

Aligning with Brand Documents:

SONY’s mission statement is, “At SONY, our mission is to be a company that inspires and fulfills

your curiosity.” Both the Facebook and Twitter platforms give the audience small details on
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what the post is about. But the majority of the posts have links leading to what idea or event

they are describing. They are really good at giving the readers just enough information to think

about the next move by SONY.

Insights Gained:

By conducting this Social Media Audit, I found it really fascinating how there are different

strategies a company takes when releasing their type of content depending on the platform

they put the information on. Although, they are different strategies, they all have the same

underlying goal. To create “sticky” content. I believe SONY has shared their voice on social

media equally as much with their gaming partners but at the same time, increase customer

involvement a little more.

Objectives

While creating a social media strategy plan, I have come up with two objectives to help benefit

SIE as a company overall, one for business and one for social media.

The first objective is to increase units per transaction (UPT) by 10% in the next three months. By

tracking a company’s UPT, you can visually see how a company is progressing over a certain

time slot. You would be able to monitor the number of units that were sold for every purchase

across multiple platforms. Monitoring UPT is another way to track the success of the company’s

net purchases.
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The second objective is to increase the use of “#DoubleThePlay” on respectable platforms to

increase customer interactions for the next three months. By inviting the use of a hashtag, we

can keep our customers in the loop with new deals and updates that will be to the spotlight in

the near future. With today’s younger generation, almost everyone on our top three social

media platforms are always using a hashtag to like, share and comment everything PlayStation.

Strategies

To go along with the two previous objectives established for the company, there will be two

strategies for each given objective.

To increase UPT by 10% in the next three months, the strategies used will be to create digital

coupons to send out to all PlayStation Plus users. The second strategy will be a “buy one, get

second game half off” offer listed on our websites and social media platforms. Both of these

strategies are developed to connect to the right audience that SONY and PlayStation have. Both

strategies are easy to implement and also easy to follow through with. If we can get our

customers to pick up their phone with the intention of purchasing a SONY related product, it

will only drive the company to more future success.

To increase the use of “#DoubleThePlay” on respectable platforms for the next three months,

the strategies used for that are to have social media users type out the hashtag for a chance to

win a 2-game bundle. The other strategy is to have users create their own caption on a “best

caption wins” post. These strategies, just like the first two, are easy to put into play and
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increase overall customer interaction and keeps the SONY name lively within multiple gaming

communities through forums and blogs.

Tactics

To help promote the business, there will be four tactics used that slightly vary from one another

across four different platforms, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok. Each tactic will consist

of three ways to properly execute the related tactic, along with important metrics and a time

slot that the tactic will be used.

For Instagram, three tactics are to post and screenshot of an old-school game every Thursday

and have people use, “#TBT” for throwback Thursday, have employees post their pets’ animal

costumes on the media platform. But not just any costume, a costume that resembles a SONY

video game character. The last point of execution would be to post two different video game

characters and ask, “who would win?” The only metrics that would be important to track during

these tactics would be engagement from comments and exposure from likes given.

The Instagram tactics would be identical for both the Facebook and Twitter platforms. For the

TikTok platform, we would still have the same tactics but since TikTok is solely based on video,

we would have to convert everything involving a still image or picture, to a video format. For

throwback Thursday, we would loop a 5-second video showing the old-school game.

Implementation

The goal of the implementation process is to outline a specific campaign aligning with pieces of

my strategy document.
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Below is an idea for a campaign SIE can utilize in the future:

Campaign Name: Game Gallery

Description: Throughout the years, video games and fictional characters have pulled on the

heartstrings of gamers for decades. Once a week, we will release the happiest/saddest game

moments that left a lasting impact on you. Look for our post every Saturday morning to see

your iconic video game moment.

Objective: To increase brand awareness on SONY exclusive video games for the next three

months.

Platforms: Instagram and TikTok

Branded Hashtags: #GameGallery, #SONY, #PlayHasNoLimits

Topic Hashtags: #GameScenes, #SadScenes, #HappyScenes

Location Tag: Place of the in-game scene that took place

Schedule: Post every Wednesday around noon

Content Creation and Curation

Content Creation: Create a graphic that goes along with the “who would win?” post. Have two

characters square up along each other and have state relating to their strength, combat and

intelligence. The caption associated with the post, “Who would win? Drop your answer down

below.”
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Content Creation 2: In reference two winning the video game bundle with the intent to increase

“#DoubleThePlay”, generate a graphic that has two different video games side by side and have

users in the comments select with one they want, along with typing out the associated hashtag.

Content Curation: Have two shareable links posted on our platforms that lead to gaming forums

to incite discussion about SONY and the PlayStation franchise. The links are below:

 https://www.purexbox.com/forums/px_other_gaming/

official_playstation_thread?start=200

 https://www.reddit.com/r/PS5/  

Infographic: Create a multiple-slide infographic on Instagram with a caption, “These are the

best-selling games throughout the past decade. Have an image of the video game shown with

the title and number of copies sold underneath the picture.

Style Guide

When it comes to selecting a style for a company, it is a big deal and could make or break any

decision and viewpoint outside forces on the company itself. The Style Guide for SIE is very

specific and perfected to fit the company’s intention when they are advertising to the public.

Most of the time, whether it’s through advertisements or online blogs, posts generally deal in

variations of blue and grey with almost always having the color of traditional black as their

background. Colors often will be animated and strings and colored waves will mix together.

There is a common theme of having a SONY video game character shown in the front, with the
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traditional black background. The intent behind these posts is to not only increase brand

awareness but to also give off a futuristic gaming vibe. Almost, as if the company is telling their

audience, “This is the future of gaming.” SONY also has an official font that is used throughout

the company, the font is called Clarendon.

As an example, THIS IS THE OFFICAL SONY FONT - CLARENDON.

Immersive Technology

In order for our users to be fully immersed with the company, I thought it would be best to

create a website where you can customize your own SONY equipment. There are other

websites out there but none are officially owned by SONY. The website would have everything

your traditional web page would have, a home screen, tabs at the top, etc. It would have a

tutorial page on how to customize, it would have an equipment tab, where you can select,

customize and order your personalized product. It would also have a contact page where the

customer helpline and email will be provided.

Calendar (May 1st - Oct. 1st)

 Every week:

o “Who would win?” post, Sunday 10:00 am

o Morning Meeting, Monday 10:00 am

o Nothing Tuesday

o Nothing Wednesday
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o #TBT old-school screenshot, Thursday 10:00 am

o SONY pet costumes, Friday 12:00 pm

o Game Gallery post, Saturday 12:00 pm

 May 5th - Cinco de Mayo

o #CincoDeMayo

o Instagram appreciation slideshow of all SONY’s Hispanic creators

 May 8th - Mother’s Day

o #MothersDay

o Tweet out asking for users’ favorite memory of their mother

 May 30th - Memorial Day

o #MemorialDay

o Show TikTok video of video game soldier saluting to fallen soldiers’ gravestones

 June 19th - Father’s Day

o #FathersDay

o Tweet out asking for users’ favorite memory of their father

 July 4th - Independence Day

o #IndependenceDay

o Show TikTok video of video game character triumphing over a battle

 Sept. 5th - Labor Day

o #LaborDay
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o Tweet out a celebratory congratulations to all workers within America and ask

users’ their best working experience on the job

Reporting

As mentioned before, there will be weekly meetings scheduled every Monday at 10:00 am. The

purpose of this meeting will be to briefly discuss the upcoming posts of the current week and

future weeks as well. Topics talked about during the meeting will include when to schedule the

week’s posts, what the next upcoming posts will be, what the posts consist of and to remind

employees to always use SONY’s style guide when generating content for the company.