Expect Better Training and Education for Connected TVs
Vendors will drive more dealer training and consumer education around connected devices
June 13, 2011 By Nancy Klosek
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Several manufacturers will also press more of their independent/regional retailers to have broad-band connections in their stores so they can deliver the types of demonstrations needed to sell more connected products.
Here are some outtakes from our discussion with the manufacture execs. See the full interviews in July’s Dealerscope and stay tuned to Dealerscope.com for more outtakes.
DEALERSCOPE: What do you plan to do to better educate the public about the benefits of 3D and connected TVs, and what type of training will you offer dealers in those areas?
Michael Fasulo, Executive Vice President, Sales Operations, Sony: From an industry point of view, education has been far from adequate. We just came off a year where we learned we confused the consumer on 3D then everybody runs to talk about ‘connectivity.’ The best way to educate is not in TV commercials, but on the shopfront floor, and on the Internet, which is a great medium. I look at connected devices the same as I do 3D, which is to say that every touchpoint we hit provides a level of depth the consumer is comfortable with.The Internet can provide depth of information or a way for the consumer to come on, grab some information quickly and leave. You can also do some great learning modules and tutorials, but that alone won’t solve it; it needs to be translated to the shopfront floor. Consumers still want to go in, and want references from their friends but also from salespeople. The more knowledgeable the salesperson, the better for the consumer. Our focus is how we can translate both great innovations to environments of experience for the consumer.
For us, from an ecosystem point of view, one area of 3D that’s compelling is personal content. No one has been able to demonstrate that like Sony. Our 3D camcorder is coming to market, and that fulfills the total ecosystem. Consumers are very aware of movies but if you haven’t seen 3D personal content or gaming, you haven’t really experienced 3D.
You’ll see us focus many activities on the shopfront, where the consumer engages.We’ll work with retailers on engaging consumers largely through independents to come up with programs and merchandising whereby they can show the total ecosystem, including personal content and gaming.
One challenge is that many independents don’t carry gaming, so we’ll work with them on ways to get them into that business without having to take a large inventory position on a category that’s not their bread and butter. We’re getting a great response to this. And the same will be true with Internet-connected devices. When you look at connected devices from Sony, it’s such an important product, starting with TVs, Vaio, our Blu-ray players, our tablet coming out, our MPEG4 cameras. There’s quite a story to tell the consumer so we have to work with the specialist.
We have training modules and our CyberScholar program that salespeople on the retail floor can sign up for. We’re putting together some great online videos that we syndicate so the retailer need only give us access to their web site to syndicate the content for consumer use as well as for the salespeople. To cap it off, we’ll have a really exciting fall promotion that’s going to all touchpoints.
Jim Sanduski, Senior Vice President of Sales, Panasonic: Ninety percent of our 32-inch-and-larger televisions, irrespective of their being LCD or plasma, have some form of connectivity in 2011. So consumer education and in-store display are important. We’re doing a couple of things. One, we’ve embarked on an advertising campaign. We launched one 30-second commercial in the April-May timeframe that spoke to connectivity with our Viera Connect system. Second, there’s in-store education. We have a Panasonic 60-person sales and training team that is spread out across the country whose role is to spend their entire days visiting stores in their region to educate floor personnel about our connected TVs and make
sure that the in-store setup is correct.
The third aspect is that we’ve made a more-than-$10 million investment in in-store displays that talk about 3D and connectivity. The display has an added layer of sophistication this year in that there are six buttons consumers can push, with each starting a video that talks about a different aspect of the television. Prominently featured is a discussion of connectivity. They’re being rolled out to about 2,000 storefronts.
Mark Viken, Vice President, Marketing, Sharp: In 3D, we’re just launching a great display unit with easier access to powered-on glasses
all the time so the consumer doesn’t have to figure out where the power button is, especially when there’s not a salesperson around. I’d say
we’re more focused on in-store training with our field team, and from a merchandising standpoint, have customized materials for impact in “the last three feet.”
Dave Das, Vice President, TV Marketing, Samsung: It’s a shared responsibility between manufacturers and retailers. I’d assert that collectively, manufacturers and retailers did not do a stellar job educating consumers on the benefits of Smart TV in the past. In 2011, collectively, both are taking great steps to improve consumer awareness.
Samsung’s focus of its first-half ad campaign is on Smart TV. For us this year, it’s an umbrella term referring to the connected TV experience: full web browser, apps, and in addition, we use the term to describe the immersive experience consumers receive when viewing 3D content. And it also encompasses design; this year, we have our ultra-narrow bezel on our premium product, just .2 inches wide, which also contributes to an immersive experience. At retail, we’re working with our partners to develop merchandising solutions that allow consumers to experience live Smart TV, wherever possible, with an Internet connection.
Jay Vandenbree, Senior Vice President, Home Entertainment, LG: Smart TVs are more of the focal point from an education standpoint than 3D, because with 3D, you can see and feel the difference. That’s a much easier conversation. With Internet-connected TV, it means different things to different people and it adds to the confusion about what any “smart” product can do and do well. It’s important for all of us to talk about what Internet-connected TVs provide: movie content, basic web browsing, access to personal content.
Where we get in trouble as an industry is to just leave it as an Internet-connected product, because that could mean to people that they can do anything on it that they can do on their computer – and, potentially, a consumer doesn’t want to do anything they can do on the Internet on their television.
I’ll give you my favorite one-person survey: last year, I went home and asked my wife what she’d do if I said I was bringing an Internet-connected TV home. And she said, ‘Great, you’ll be doing your emails in bed.’ Her perspective on an ‘Internet-connected TV’ was that it would be an invasion on her downtime. We need to be careful about what the value is to the consumer and how we can speak more to that, about what they get when they are connected. That’s what our training is about.
We’ve invested tremendously in a group to go in-store for specific trainings to talk about those things. We’ve worked hard on our digital assets in how to train consumers before they come in, in our online presentations. We’ve worked to take that information and put it in our on-floor demo loops.
For our Smart TVs, we focus on the user experience. All have three things in common: they’re connectable out of the box, they have our home dashboard where we’ve organized content in a much easier way for users to find it, or to reorder it to their preference, and we’ve included a Magic Remote that can work just like a mouse to get to something by pointing and clicking.
Frank DeMartin, Vice President of Sales, Mitsubishi: It’s true that there hasn’t been a lot of education in the industry on connected TV. With 3D, the technology is a lot more obvious and easier to explain than connected TV, which can be so many different things: Is it Netflix? Is it apps? It’s evolving and it’s not one thing, so education is critical for the entire industry. It’s also an area with a lot of potential for a lot of exciting new services for consumers.
We’re excited about it and continue to train our retailers directly. But training in the old-school paradigm has changed from the one-on-one style. We also need to communicate directly to consumers. They are doing the research online before they go into stores. So we’re trying to reach folks that way, too.One big thing we’ve been doing is making rich media available to our retailers online. We create content and features on things like streaming TV. We provide not only graphics and text but also videos explaining to consumers what it is. It all gets packaged by a third party we use, and then it’s syndicated to retailers.
Scott Ramirez, Vice President, Product Marketing & Development, TV and Digital AV, Toshiba: It’s a joint responsibility between retailers and manufacturers. From manufacturers’ point of view, it’s a matter of connectivity to broadband in the store; then there’s a lot to demonstrate to consumers about Smart TV. However, many retailers didn’t have broadband connections, which meant they really couldn’t demonstrate anything. And it’s hard to explain such a concept to a consumer who isn’t knowledgeable about it. Knowing that, it would have been a good idea for manufacturers to have built in an auto demonstration feature.
Who should have done more? It’s hard to say. Should manufacturers have spent more money and put in more memory for demonstration? Should retailers have spent more money and put in broadband? I won’t point fingers. I think we all didn’t quite do the right job at first in explaining all the benefits of Smart TV, but that’s changing now.
Manufacturers are starting to make portals and TVs that are easier to understand and retailers are adding broadband. People are also doing some end-caps to make things better. Looking forward to next year, it will be taken to a whole new level because the Smart TV category will be a lot more important.
Toshiba, for 2011, is doing more in-store training and POP materials to help explain features and benefits. For 2012, we’ll take it to another level by springtime.
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