Sony drafts in Real Madrid’s Gareth Bale to push Xperia Z3 phone

Sony has appointed Gareth Bale as brand ambassador for its Z3 mobile series and fitness app, as it faces increasing pressures in a smartphone market dominated by Samsung and Apple.

The technology company announced its partnership today (5 March).  Bale will push the brand’s camera and fitness capabilities of the Xperia Z3 series and Lifelog app.

Catherine Cherry, marketing director for Sony mobile says: “Fitness is a key passion point for our customers and working with such an established athlete means that we can reward them.”

Sony kicked off partnership activities with a competition earlier this week (1 March), in which 11 Xperia consumers can win a trip to meet and train with Bale in Madrid.

Sony sold 11.9 million smartphones, showing a lift of 27% to the previous year, according to the company’s latest earning’s release. However, the company is facing increasing pressure in a competitive smartphone market.

The brand has fallen to fourth place in a list of handsets on YouGov’s BrandIndex. Sony’s ‘buzz’ – a metric that looks at the amount of positive or negative things a consumer has heard in the past two weeks, shows that the brand has a score of 1.9. It falls behind Apple who has a score of 10.0, Samsung with a score of 7.4 and HTC with a score of 2.5.

Last month, Sony spoke to Reuters about its intentions to boost profits 25-fold by 2018, by growing more profitable parts of the company such as its camera and Playstation division. Sony’s chief executive Kazuo Hirai said to Reuters that the new strategy may see the company exit the competitive TV and smartphone market.

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