Sharp are making a huge comeback with the launch of their new home appliance range in Europe and what better place to do that than IFA Berlin, one of Europe’s biggest consumer electronics convention? Sharp have given me exclusive behind the scenes access during my time at IFA 2015, so many thanks to them for bringing me out here, and feeding me of course.
Sharp’s objective is simple, to cause a shockwave effect through the white goods market by introducing their new For Life promise. For Life, is a way for Sharp to integrate the home appliance more into people’s lives by improving the after-sales service. Sharp have now introduced a Twitter feed where consumers can ask engineers for tech advice 24/7 and even book a call out if their machine has gone wrong. They’ve also promised for a call out within 24 hours of first logging the fault. What’s better, if the engineer cannot repair the machine, Sharp are willing to replace it under the For Life promise. Details about how this works can be found on the Sharp Home Europe once launched.
Sharp have invested a lot of time and money into the launch of the For Life promise, their stand at IFA is absolutely huge! It has literally taken days to install everything. To give you some kind of spectrum into what’s involved: around 70 people were involved in physically building the stand from putting up walls to installing home appliances to decorating the kitchen tables, there are X amount of products including X fridges and freezers, X amount of washing machines, X amount of dishwashers, X amount of cookers, X amount of televisions to display their advertisements and countless decorative products to really bring the stand’s kitchen sets to life. All of this could not have been possible if it wasn’t for one man, Sharp’s first non-Japanese CEO, Paul Molyneux.
After fast tracking his way through various senior management and leadership positions, Paul Molyneux is the first non-Japanese person to be appointed to the board of directors for the Sharp Corporation, a Japanese company. Molyneux has also been named the new Chief Executive Officer, Group General Manager and President of Sharp Electronics Europe GmbH.
In a recent press release, Molyneux comments “It is with great honour and pride that I have accepted the opportunity given to me by the Corporation of this new role within the Sharp Europe organisation, namely that of the new CEO. I recognise the responsibility that comes with this role and will be fully dedicated to the task ahead. I firmly believe that with the talent and skill set we have across Europe, we can really build a self-sustaining organisation that can deliver long-term profitable growth and a secure future for the region,” Paul Molyneux commented.
Paul Molyneux is now working to bring kitchen white goods back to Europe by launching their new For Life campaign. The campaign has been designed to shock the white goods industry by introducing their new fix or replace promise, a 24/7 Twitter customer support as well as next day engineer call out. Sharp have also set up their #HelpUsLearn blog make the market aware that these problems are real consumer issues that need to be addressed. There are currently around 3,400 unanswered tweets about problems people are having with their white goods. Paul Molyneux is hoping to address this. The campaign is being launched this week during IFA 2015 in Berlin, Germany.
The Sharp press conference was incredible. Delivery of the company’s objectives for their home appliances were extremely clear and did build a lot of hype between the journalists who stuck around. Of course, there was the persuasion of some tasty German food but I believe there was some real interest. I spoke to a couple of journalists working for various publications and they only gave me positive feedback for the conference. No one voiced any kinds of concern regarding their next day engineer call out and were impressed with the 24/7 Twitter help. The stand continued to stay busy during the press day until around 17:00 when they started filtering out. I’ve got to say well done to Sharp for pulling off a decent press launch for the new For Life promise.
Once the consumers started turning up things got hectic. The stand at times were very busy, often looking through a sea of bodies engrossed in the new tech Sharp have to offer in their new home appliances. The atmosphere got louder as more people came into the IFA2015 event. Sharp’s project managers were always engaged in conversations with what I believe were industry buyers and also surprisingly the general public who showed a larger interest than I thought they would. Looks like Sharp’s new home appliances are slowly on the rise. A great start to a successful comeback in Europe.
You can check out Sharp’s full range of home appliances at their brand new website, sharphomeappliances.com. It’s a very basic setup but that’s a good thing. The information is clear for visitors to engage with.
