Rock on, Walkman!

From the The Hard News Cafe 7-24-04

No doubt about it!

Even the lowly street vendor hawking dubious cure-alls on his rickety pushcart knows the secret to an upward sales curve is a name that sounds, well, like an artifact of globalization – a potpourri of Hindi and English, or Hinglish.

It's a continental phenomenon, this mixing of languages, and countries across Asia have produced their own hybrids. There's Chinglish in China, Jinglish or Japlish in Japan, Taglish in the Phillipines -- the list of informal dialects goes on, sometimes to the scorn and utter dismay of ardent nationalists who fear the trend might lead to an eventual mangling of sophisticated languages.

Naturally, then, if you're in the marketing department of a large multinational corporation, you have a full plate of cultural and linguistic sensitivities to consider in coming up with a brand name that works.

That's tough stuff.

And it's exactly the problem Toru Kohno and his team at Sony's publicity division wrestled with 25 years ago, in July 1979, while the company prepared to launch what it believed was a "dynamic, fun concept" that would revolutionize the way the world listened to music.

The idea was simple: Sony's Japanese co-founder, Akio Morita, had been keeping a keen eye on the country's music-obsessed youth market. Teenagers simply couldn't get enough of their favorite tracks. They took their heavy tape players everywhere – to school and work, on long drives – all the while humming and hurrying on their way.

Sony was already working on the portable stereo system we now know as the "ghetto blaster," but Morita believed there was tremendous potential for something a lot smaller. The company's tape recorder division promised him they would create a product before the beginning of the summer vacation. It was to be a playback-only, small headphone stereo unit with an extra jack, so two people could listen simultaneously.

Thus, the TPS-L2 was born – a bulky, blue-and-silver brick with remarkable sound that could be taken anywhere. Morita was excited, and envisioned a tsunami of publicity to introduce the new gadget. Only one problem remained: No one knew quite what to call it.

Kohno and other ad gurus scratched their heads. Their initial thought: Perhaps the product ought to be called by different names in different markets. Several possibilities were bandied about. In the United States, plans were made to call the device "Soundabout," the United Kingdom would know it as "Stowaway," and in Sweden, it would be called "Freestyle."

Another name had been suggested, but head honchos were afraid that it might sound too much like a bad translation of a Japanese phrase into English -- an inscrutable bit of Japlish that was certainly avoidable. The company wasn't about to let its marketing team have a hand in the linguistic mixing bowl.

But there was something about "Walkman" that seemed to stick. The suffix "-man" was incredibly popular at the time, thanks in large part to the worldwide fame enjoyed by Superman. And the product was also based on Sony's Pressman Desktop Cassette Recorder. In the end, it seemed like the only name that might have universal appeal. So, with some reluctance, the Sony "Walkman" made its debut in Tokyo's Ginza district.

The rest, as they say, is history.

By June 1989, 10 years after the launch of its first model, Sony's Walkman sales had exceeded 50 million. In 1995, sales figures were three times that number. Now, executives at Sony say the company's new digital players could signal the second age of the Walkman.

Whether the Ancient Mariner of portable music can hold its own against the sexy iPod has yet to be seen, but one thing is certain: The Walkman changed our world at a fundamental level, paving the way for a personalized electronic culture we take for granted today.

Oh, and remember that pesky problem of mixing languages? There's no more quibbling about that. In 1986, much to Morita's delight, the Oxford English Dictionary gave the moniker its venerable nod when it included it as a word synonymous with "small battery-operated cassette players and headphones capable of being worn by a person who is on foot."

Enough said. Happy birthday, Walkman!