As British Statesman and Philosopher Edmund Burke noted, “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”
Sony is repeating an advertising mistake made in 2001 by IBM. To promote the Sony Play Station Portable (PSP) the company hired graffiti artists in major urban areas to spray-paint buildings with simple, totemic images of kids playing with the gadget. Reactions to the ads are more negative than positive, and accuse the company of trying to buy street cred, according to Wired.
The PSP images contain no words, no logos and no product references. They show a bunch of kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, puppet, paddle or ice cream bar.
The fact that the PSP ads follow the very recent widely publicized news that Sony music CDs infected customers’ computers with security-hole-inducing spyware, has likely fueled public dislike for the graffiti campaign. The company needs to find a way to temper the image damage created by the stupidly conceived spyware, and the PSP campaign isn’t it.
A flickr gallery called Fony Playstation illustrates how critics in San Francisco have expressed their disapproval by adding some spray paint of their own to the Sony ads.
In 2001, IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco more than $120,000 in fines and clean-up costs after Ogilvy & Mather, its advertising agency, used biodegradable chalk to spray paint Linux advertisements on the cities’ sidewalks as part of a “Love, Peace & Linux” campaign.
Sony PSP Graffiti Campaign Draws Ire, Repeats History
BL Ochman | December 5, 2005 | Permanent Link | Comments (3) | TrackBack (
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I’m sorry BL but you’re wrong about a few things. *PSP have paid for their graffiti billboards – they haven;t gone around tagging buildings.
*You shouldn;t connect PSP with the Sony rights issue. Kids love PSP and I’d imagine never heard or cared much about the blogger movement against Sony and their copyright enabled CDs
* San Fran is a special case – you can;t look at whaty happened there and think this is happeniong on a bigger scale. It isn’t. This isn;t happening in NYC. San Fran has always harbored a counter culture different from the rest of the States.
It’s a smart campaign and fun AND legal. We keep telling brands to engage with their audience in a more interesting way and when they do everyone then turns to complain.
This reminds me of a former city councilman in Birmingham.
He used a pressure washer and a stencil to write “VOTE BLAKE” on an algae-stained concrete interstate bulwark, with a lot of visibility and traffic.
People complained, but what are you going to charge him with? Unlawful cleaning?
I know that you can call people on the iphone and not the itouch, but what else is different? For example, do both of them have internet? If so, do you pay extra fees for the internet? Or does it come with the package? Please give information about other applications as well! I’m planning on getting one…don’t know which yet…so yeah. Thanks!
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iphone 3g