• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, August 4, 2008

During the month of August, San Diego, Calif.-based Sony Electronics will run a retail promotion for Sony Cyber-shot cameras featuring Smile Shutter technology at Sony Style Stores, on Sonystyle.com, and at other participating retailers. The company plans to donate $100,000 to Operation Smile, a Norfolk, Va.-based charity.

Operation Smile has earmarked the funds to provide free physical examinations and reconstructive surgeries for children suffering from facial deformities such as cleft lips and palates. The charity has treated more than 115,000 children since being founded in 1982.

Sony also will donate 30 Cyber-shot DSC-W150 digital cameras to help Operation Smile volunteers capture smiles at sites worldwide. Equipped with Smile Shutter technology, the cameras automatically capture a smile when they detect one, without anyone having to press the shutter button. The result is snapshots with natural-looking smiles and expressions.

About 30 retail stores plan to participate in Sony's Operation Smile marketing campaign, aside from Sony Style stores and the company's Web site. Sony designed dealer templates making it easy for stores to create newspaper inserts. While some retail stores plan to place newspaper ads, others will have counter cards both in English and Spanish, along with advertisements on their Web sites.

Karim Noblecilla, senior product marketing manager for Cyber-shot digital cameras at Sony Electronics, says FSIs placed this month in nine million newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal will promote prices for cameras with Smile Shutter.

Sony runs several FSIs annually. The ads are cross-category promotions--not only for cameras--that typically highlight seasonal events such as back-to-school or Christmas and other December holidays. The FSIs focus on back-to-school, but for Sony Electronics, the ads will mention the promotion with Operation Smile.

Sony also reached out to mommy bloggers at carandcaboodle.com, momscentral.com and fiveminutesformom.com with the hope of generating buzz.

Sony's internal estimates put Cyber-shot digital camera unit sales at 26 million in 2008. Some analysts suggest the third calendar quarter in a year generates the second-best unit sales, beaten only by the fourth-quarter holiday season.

Ron Glaz, director of IDC's digital imaging research services, doesn't expect the promotion to have an effect on total units sold in August. "Sony plans to donate $100,000 for the month no matter if they sell 50 or 100,000 Cyber-shots," he says.