2018 CT Hall of Fame: John Briesch
August 21, 2018
- Author: CTA Staff
July/August 2018
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The Consumer Technology Hall of Fame honors visionaries who have made a significant impact on the consumer technology industry. These leaders and entrepreneurs have laid the foundation for the technologies, products, services and apps that are improving lives around the world.
Former Sony executive John Briesch will be inducted along with 13 other industry leaders at an awards dinner on Wednesday evening, November 7, at Capitale in New York City. Over the next several months, i3 will highlight this prestigious class.
John Briesch, Sony Executive
Diversification is the key to any company's long-term success and John Briesch was the key to Sony's. In the early 1980s, as Sony's VP of Audio Marketing, Briesch not only headed the company's full expansion into audio components but spearheaded its and the industry's drive to successfully bring the compact disc to market.
Born in Chicago to John and Genevieve, Briesch earned a B.S. from Northern Illinois University in 1971. After two years in the Army, Briesch looked for a marketing/sales position in a dynamic, growth-oriented industry.
Briesch joined Sony in 1975 as a Midwest sales rep, rising to national hi-fi sales manager in 1981. In 1982, he was promoted to VP of Audio Marketing, and created the marketing and distribution strategy for Sony Audio products, which had been distributed and sold by Superscope. Using Sony's Walkman and the pending CD as foundations, Briesch soon established Sony Audio as a leader in portable audio, component (HiFi) audio and car stereo.
Briesch understood establishing a new music format would require a total change in consumer habits and a redesign of the music industry. Vinyl records and compact cassette tapes were cheap to produce, had a high replacement demand and retailers had established packaging/racking displays for LPs. Plus, there were no CD manufacturing facilities in the U.S. So from 1982 through 1984, Briesch and his team visited almost every music company in America, along with more receptive artists and engineers, to introduce not only CD technology, but to explain the business model and the potential for future format expansion such as CD-ROM and video. He signed licenses with a variety of labels to produce and sell limited CD titles in the U.S., which lead to Sony building the first U.S. CD manufacturing plant in Indiana.
To ensure fast consumer acceptance for CD, Briesch created and co-chaired the Compact Disc Industry Group, working with record labels and hardware competitors to market the new technology. In the midst of these CD promotion and selling activities, Briesch also earned a professional masters degree from Harvard in 1984.
Frustrated by the lack of audio options for children at Toys R Us, Briesch, now a father of young children with his wife, Cindy, led the U.S. effort to design and launch the My First Sony products in fall of 1986.
In 1987, Briesch became president of Sony's Consumer Sales Company, and quickly transformed Sony into a total direct sales operation, eliminating its distributors. Briesch then implemented a "distribution channel management" program that matched different categories of retailers with unique marketing and product strategies, a strategy later emulated by competitors.
In April 1989, Briesch was promoted to president of Sony's Consumer Products Group. Under his guidance, Sony's annual consumer electronics sales revenue surpassed $6 billion – five times its previous totals – and Sony became the leading market shareholder in the U.S. consumer electronics industry with leading shares in portable audio, digital imaging, home audio products and premium television products. Briesch also led Sony's introduction of DVD, satellite receivers, HDTVs, telephones, and more.
In July 1998, Briesch was tapped to lead Sony's Business Systems Group, and spearheaded the company's efforts to market directly to end users via a co-branded credit card in partnership with Citibank: the Sony Card, which would attract more than 900,000 customers and $2 billion in annual revenue. Additionally, Briesch chaired Sony's first e-commerce effort in the U.S., SonyStyle.com, which launched in November 2000.
After retiring from Sony in January 2010, Briesch became an independent consumer electronics, credit card and loyalty marketing consultant.
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