Sony's board is contemplating breaking up the company. The agitator for this change is billionaire Daniel Loeb, whose Third Point hedge fund owns less than 10% of the Japanese tech giant but exerts massive influence. Loeb asserts that the structure of Sony is stifling its share price and has found an ally in progressive Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Loeb wants Sony to spin off its Entertainment/Content arm and Music label, file a separate IPO for those assets and refocus the core business on its consumer technology offering.

In the global context it is tough to argue with the proposal. Sony’s days as the driving force of consumer electronics behind brands like Walkman, Discman and Playstation have been eclipsed not just by Apple but by Samsung and LG. Loeb, with this move, is suggesting that focus has been the issue, not just the aggressiveness of the competition. He asserts that Sony has been pulled in so many different directions that its core business has lost its luster. It used to be that putting your CEO in an ad was the sure sign that a company was in trouble, but as I previously commented about Pfizer’s Starbursting and Blackberry, it appears that the new early warning sign has become pressure to “get back to doing what you do best."

Sony currently resides at number 40 on Interbrand’s Best Global Brands list but now sits a full 31 spots behind its more recent rival, Samsung in 9th place, while its share price has declined by 85 percent in the past 13 years. Despite the beautiful ads that surrounded its Bravia TV launches, the company has failed to fully replace its iconic brands of the 90s with new versions that can conquer today's even more competitive environment.

Sony’s brand has always been far more present in the consumer space, they created so many iconic, mainstream habits in tech (portability for instance) and gaming. The conversations at CES, SXSW, CTIA etc have been around gamification and bringing social tools and thinking to more parts of people’s working lives. Sony’s Make. Believe approach suggests that this is a focus for them as well but they need to be far more open and progressive in how they pursue partnerships and OEM relationships or else Microsoft, with Xbox, will move even further ahead because of how embedded Microsoft is in the workplace.

The Loeb proposal also highlights that it's time for Sony to rethink the practice of creating captive, proprietary technologies (Blu-ray for instance) that try to usher consumers into a single brand relationship. Consumers have balked at committing to a single provider for all their needs; even Apple has seen teething troubles in driving into the TV market. It's increasingly becoming a world where 'best partner,' 'most compatible' and 'most consumer-oriented' wins, and Sony risks becoming the odd man out if it doesn't integrate not only with consumers' lives but the technology that surrounds them.

Loeb's move could serve as a catalyst and spark to re-instill that fire into Sony that made it once so transformative in the world of modern consumer technology. To really rebound the company must understand consumers better than anyone else, be more open to partnerships than anyone else, be more creative than anyone else and be nimbler and less distracted than anyone else. This move addresses the last of these needs, the rest will come next. This pivot seems small on paper, but it's seismic for brands like Sony that risk marginalization if they don’t embrace change before they are steamrolled by it.

To make this happen Sony executives must mix "outrospection" with their current introspection. The questions they will ask themselves are both “how is our structure holding us back ” and, “what does the consumer’s life look like and how do I play a meaningful role in it”; not necessarily in that order. Loeb understands this distinction and though his motives will be questioned, the methods he suggests are a step in the right direction.

Hugh Tallents is a Senior Director of Strategy at Interbrand New York

If Facebook is a key channel in your strategy, then think about this: recent data suggests that Facebook fans are “hiding posts at an alarming rate.” In the race to count more fans, or followers, brands may not be connecting with them in a meaningful way.  Rather than fans un-liking, un-fanning or even commenting, they simply choose to make your brand invisible.

A recent article from Fast Company by Ekaterina Walter, Intel's social media strategist, highlights that one of the ways people “negatively” respond to Facebook pages is to simply hide all posts. Working with PageLever, a Facebook analytics tool. Walter discovered:

“Facebook fans are most likely to block ALL your page stories when they take a negative feedback action, 60 times more likely than unfanning your page. Which means that just because your brand has a lot of fans doesn’t mean all those fans are seeing the page content. Some fans may have just hidden the page. Fans are more likely to report a post as spam than to unlike the page.”

What most caught our eye, was one of Walter’s recommendations for avoiding invisibility: Brand Voice. We could not agree more.

“Tweak your copy so it’s recognizably your brand voice. Sometimes the problem isn’t that the content is off-topic, but that it’s off-voice. Your brand has a unique voice, which your fans know and appreciate, so make sure your posts are phrased in a way your customers expect.”

Brand Voice is so much more than how you say it. It’s being true to who you are, the personality your fans have come to know and love. It’s making sure that everything you say lives up to it – the type of content you curate and the spin you put on it when you share. It’s how you sound, how naturally it comes and how unmistakably yours the words seem.

It’s getting all that personality across in limited real estate, in a smattering of words. Hard to do? Sure. Have to do? Absolutely. That extra attention to detail is what adds up to extraordinary experiences. Without it, you're just another – possibly invisible – voice in the noise.

Paola Norambuena is Executive Director of Verbal Identity, North America.

For more on digital strategy and branding in this new ecosystem, please see Simon Smith and Erica Velis' piece Playing to Win on the Digital Frontier.

Photo from Pret A Manger's website, Working at Pret

Lately I find I have eaten a considerable amount of lunches at Pret a Manger, the London-based pre-made sandwich shop. Thinking about one great experience after another, I grew curious about how Pret continues to over-deliver on my expectations. I did a little research on the company to learn more.

The fundamentals of the business strategy are tight: provide a streamlined menu, prepare food the day of consumption, use local ingredients, charge a price roughly equivalent to a fast food value meal and get the customer in and out of the store in under 5 minutes.

This strategy actually affords the brand an ability to beat the traditional giants on their own promises. Who else can deliver the freshness and speed Pret has to offer?

Beyond speed and freshness, Pret really differentiates itself on the experience it offers. As you approach an army of cashiers on your way out of the store, you are greeted by smiling employees conveying excitement as they help you move through the line at lightning speed.

No doubt, scaling this type of experience at the rate Pret has grown is no easy task. To do this, the company has very strategically aligned its employees to the superior experience it seeks to deliver to customers.

This alignment is present in every phase of the employee’s journey with the company – from the experience of applying for the job through getting promoted. Prospective employees are sent to work in a store for a day where the team in place will, after a few hours, determine if the candidate exhibits the right level of customer orientation to get the job.

Once on the job, the employee finds himself a part of a team that is collectively incentivized to deliver the highest level of cheer to customers possible. When employees receive a promotion, they are given $50-$100 that they are required to give back to the colleagues that helped shape their career along the way.

As the brand continues to grow, no doubt other brands will look to react by pulling on the traditional levers: product innovation, price, and scale. However, pulling on these levers promises only periodic spikes in business performance, not the sustainable value generated from real strategic alignment.

The lesson for brands? Focus more on aligning your employee base behind your business strategy to deliver a richer customer experience.

Dan Spiegel is a Senior Consultant for Interbrand.

As businesses continue to evolve the relationship between their brands and their consumers, great pains are taken to create an idealized experience across touchpoints, both physical and digital. For many organizations, the website is the gateway into creating and nurturing relationships with audiences. From the visitor’s point of view, each click is expected to uncover information and further the journey not only into the website but also with the brand.

So what happens when a visitor takes a bad turn? If you have a broken link on your site (or a site incorrectly hyperlinks you) visitors are likely to land on an error, or “404” page. In a recent TED talk, Renny Gleeson, Global Digital Strategies Director for Wieden+Kennedy, likened coming across a 404 page as “the feeling of a broken relationship…it’s like a slap in the face.”

Error pages are disappointing and frustrations that arise from these moments can force an abrupt end to an interaction a user is having with a brand. Research by the World Wide Web Consortium (“W3C”) suggests that 404 Errors can reduce site usage by as much as 10%.

A robust digital experience is central to maintaining a successful brand. Just as important as the website’s UI or its content is how a brand addresses the kinks that inevitably come along during a visitor’s experience. To address these frustrations, educate visitors and create a little fun, business are now incorporating branded moments and conversations into these intrinsic annoyances of the web experience.

So while you cannot always control the cause of an error page, you can minimize hurt feelings with a custom 404 page that addresses the issue and invites visitors alternative paths to continue on their journey. You may have seen attempts at humorous 404 pages, good for keeping visitors entertained. But what goes into making a valuable branded 404 page?

A well-branded 404 page serves as a moment to educate, to encourage a search or to display related information visitors might be interested in reading. When creating or updating your custom 404 page, keep the following tips in mind to ensure your audience stays with you:

• Explain: Quickly let the visitor know where they are and why the error has occurred.

• Look and Feel: The error page should look as good as the rest of your website (if not more appealing to keep visitors engaged).

• Voice: Avoid technical jargon and speak to your audience as your brand would across all touchpoints.

• Wayfinding: Provide your audience with some intuitive and easy options to keep them on your website, including a search box. Think about the most valuable sections, articles, blog posts or pages on your website as options to share with visitors.

• Tracking: Identify common entry routes to your 404 page to spot, fix and minimize broken links.

While 404 pages are unavoidable, losing your audiences is not. Leverage a smartly executed 404 page to create a second chance to re-engage visitors, create a branded moment and direct them to what makes your brand great.

Ruth Rivera is a Strategy Consultant for Interbrand.

The upcoming issue of Interbrand IQ is focused on digital and will feature brands and brand leaders that are helping traditional businesses transcend the idea that they need a separate digital strategy – and demonstrates how to incorporate digital into every aspect of business and brand strategy.

We sat down recently with Adam Brotman, Chief Digital Officer at Starbucks, and learned how the coffee giant is ensuring that the Starbucks’ experience lives well beyond the coffee house. Our interview could not have been better timed as Adam was just named #3 on Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business 2012, joining a group of business innovators who dare to think differently.