A Look Back at Sony's Bizarre PS3 Advertising

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
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A Look Back at Sony's Bizarre PS3 Advertising

Sony's recent PS3 commercials are straightforward, clever, and actually sell you the product - but they weren't always this way. Let's take a look back at some of Sony's more, uh, unusual ad campaigns for its PlayStation 3.

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Yesterday, we saw the first new commercials [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/94235-PS3-Slim-Does-Everything-Says-Ads] in Sony's push to make North American consumers aware of the PS3 Slim, and, we liked them. They were funny, they did a good job at communicating the good points of Sony's black not-quite-such-a-monolith, and they were something that you could show your non-gamer friends and go, "Yeah, see this? You should get one!"

Unfortunately, Sony's brush of straightforward, lucid advertising - see its European commercials [http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2009/aug/24/sony-playstation-3-ad] - is very much a recent thing. Even if we just concentrate on PS3 advertisements (and ignore the wince-worthy "Squirrel, please!" and "All I Want For Christmas is a PSP" campaigns for the PlayStation Portable), we've seen some fairly odd things from Sony since the PS3's 2006 launch. Frankly, it's no wonder we may have blocked them from our memory.



The early ad campaigns in the States for the PS3 featured Sony's sleek black George Foreman grill in a white, featureless room. To their credit, though, some of the ads in this series did a good job at displaying the Sixaxis controller [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eD7h_vHDa8]. Others, though? Not so much.

While the "Baby" commercial [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kfbbxMji0A]. What are we supposed to get out of that, huh? That the PS3 will make creepy baby dolls cry, retract their tears, and confuse it with their mother? That's terrifying.




Yet even the PS3 Baby commercial isn't the most bizarre (and unsettling) advertisement Sony unleashed on the world for the PS3. How about the "This is Living" [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEXj0XZxox4] ads, where a naked Russian man lying in a bathtub in a darkened room challenged viewers to think about their lives before pulling a gun on them and cackling. Oh, sure, it might get the viewer to consider the mediocrity of his or her own life, but will it get them to buy a PlayStation?

Nor was the Creepy-Russian-Man-in-Tub the crowning moment of "What the Jesus?" for Sony's PS3 marketing department. It wasn't even the most disturbing PS3 ad involving a naked man, either. No, that honor actually goes to a print advertisement out of Vienna, where a seated naked man has had his penis replaced by a thumb [http://gaygamer.net/2008/05/sony_continues_to_horrify_the.html] (NSFW, Disturbing). I don't even know what they were going for here. "Hey, you're a gamer, replace your sex life with games?" "Gamers have small dicks?" What on Earth?


Thankfully, they weren't all thumb-penis Photoshops. Hell, they weren't all clunkers, either - for reference, take a look at the minute-long "Universe of Entertainment" [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgHZ2xaigwk] spot. Still stylish (and with a bizarre fondness for morphing the PS3's frame) and still unique, but it displays the PS3's capabilities in a cool-looking way that, more importantly, results in no mental scarring whatsoever.


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Of course, on the flip side, it looks like Sony's marketers haven't gotten the bizarre ads [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/94139-Japanese-Slim-PS3-Commercials-Are-Really-Weird] out of their system, either. Still, it's hard to argue that they're not on the right track here. You might have a great little system, guys, but it's a good thing that you learned to lay off the avant-garde.

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Swaki

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Apr 15, 2009
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that baby commercial haunts my nightmares.

i don't think they have all the craziness out of their system yet, soon they will show make something along a naked farmer running away from screaming Asian baby's "playstation - buy our consoles or we will keep on making these adds"
 

Vim-Hogar

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Sep 2, 2008
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If you'll allow me to move beyond TV ads, I remember seeing a PS3 ad on Gamespot's front page a few years back. It was done in Flash but simply consisted of the words "Playstation 3" and a picture of a PS3 floating in front of a white background. That had to be about the most exceptionally pointless advertising I've ever seen.
 

j0z

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Apr 23, 2009
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That baby commercial was downright creepy. Does that mean I should keep my PS3 and my sister's babydolls separated? because I dont want a Chucky clone coming after me and my PS3 while I sleep!

Plus, that newspaper add was kinda... well... PS3. I can only say WTFFFFFFFF to that.
 

Lordmarkus

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Jun 6, 2009
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That baby commercial are just god-awfully creepy. That one and the Russian one makes me consider sharp objects in my brain and that makes it very hard to buy a PS3.
 

Kross

World Breaker
Sep 27, 2004
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Way back when I first started working here doing community work, we all got to go to E3. There were these giant billboards up all over, as is typical with E3, but most of them were for the as-yet unreleased PS3.

Their campaign was centered around the slogan "DON'T FEAR CHANG3". Or even better were the signs that just had the word "CHANG3". None of the ones I recall had any content besides that, or even a mention of Sony.

So the next few days/months/years had us cracking "Do you fear Chang?" And "Don't fear Chang". Or "OHGOD CHANG IS COMING TO KILL US ALL" jokes. Mainly when we weren't insulting each other's parentage. Which is rare.

Oh, Sony marketing. :(
 

Simalacrum

Resident Juggler
Apr 17, 2008
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Oh Sony... for better or for worse, you'll always evoke emotion out of me... whether it be celebration or disgust, however, remains to be seen.

I have to admit, though, I didn't realise it got as bad as penis-thumbs... people, for your own sanities sake, DON'T CLICK ON THAT LINK. I only survived cause I left my sanity behind long, long ago.
 

Word Salad

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Apr 21, 2009
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It's okay if they go for the avant-garde for the Japanese Commercials. The Japanese practically live off of that kind of stuff.
 

Susan Arendt

Nerd Queen
Jan 9, 2007
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Zac_Dai said:
Lord_Panzer said:
Ghost8585 said:
CantFaketheFunk said:
A Look Back at a dead horse we like to beat until there are just blood splatters
Fixed.
Point being?
His point being its obviously a slow day for the Escapist news team who are having to scrape the barrel for PS3 bashing.
Oh, chill the hell out. I don't care what product these ads are trying to sell, they're beyond bizarre. Also, the post starts out with John applauding Sony's newest commercials.

Stop seeing things that aren't there.
 

AceDiamond

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Jul 7, 2008
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I like the new commercials (aside from the unintentional comedy of them coming out a week after the annoucement that there will be no more PS2 Backwards Compatibility for the PS3 ever, and thus the ads saying "it does everything" is a bit funny when viewed that way) but it is a bit odd that it took them 3 years to come up with an ad campaign that was coherent and not psychotically bizarre for the console.

I mean yes, Sony's ad division has always been a bit crazy but the first ads for the PS1 and the PS2 were for the most part sane enough.
 

cleverlymadeup

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Mar 7, 2008
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they've had some odd advertising but frankly you need some odd advertising to stick out in the minds of the people

for the record video games have always had odd commericals, i mean if you want to see truly odd check out some Nintendo or Sega ads
 

Lenny Magic

Hypochondriacal Calligrapher
Jan 23, 2009
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Wow and I thought the original Xbox had wired ads...

just thought I would share that with you....
 

Pendragon9

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Apr 26, 2009
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I for one liked their commercials. They kinda hurt my brain at some points, but you know, it goes away.
 

Xvito

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Aug 16, 2008
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In most of those commercials; the Ps3 feels a lot like The Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

And that's... A bit disturbing...